Final Fantasy XVI Review - A Labor of Love

Final Fantasy XVI (FFXVI) says you have a reason to love the world you live in, even if everything begs and claws at you to give in. Love’s presence is palpable through what can feel endlessly bleak and grim for much of the experience, wondering when it truly lets up, if our efforts will yield reward. The oppressive weight placed on bearers, the harm of holding a faith’s teachings as absolute, the cruelty to take advantage of you at your weakest. But as the story progresses, it gives way to a brighter tone symbolizing the gradual success of our protagonist, Clive Rosfield’s, endeavors. The reward when a community achieves the impossible, the acceptance of your deeds and committing yourself to righting your wrongs, the understanding that nobody should convince you to settle for less. The game asks you to love you for you. To make peace with your individuality, and join with those who would elevate each other.

As a Final Fantasy XIV player who proudly calls it my favorite video game story of all time, I came into this game with certain adjusted expectations for how the game would turn out. I will not call them low, because I spent the previous 7 months fearing daily about how the game wouldn’t live up to my expectations and the $500 price tag I spent to buy the Collector’s Edition and a digital version to play at midnight release. Needless to say, FFXVI smashed my expectations in a majority of aspects, met my expectations in a lot of ways, and fell below in others. The issues I have with this game are overall minor however due to my familiarity with their formula. It’s a game that works perfectly for me and will no doubt meet plenty of criticism from people who are simply not a fan of the game design and formula.

Review starts here

WORLD

Our world is Valisthea, and the developers take a very linear approach to making the world feel lively with an equally immersive soundtrack to match. 

In terms of exploration, it's a visually beautiful world with towns, hideouts, and routes people constantly conversing about any kind of pressing topic that much of the time doesn’t even pertain to the events of the main story to show how people have more pressing matters to deal with. That being said, the best I can describe it is a world that is meant to be used, not explored. It’s an extremely linear game with the illusion of a more wide world due to it's invisible walls. There is no reward for exploring because every single place that exists on the map will be used one way or another. For example in the last area of the game, several areas went completely unused, no treasures, no interactables, no enemies, until you received a hunt or sidequest that brought you there. This applies to every zone in the game but by the end of the game the formula becomes immediately apparent. It creates a world that can either create mystery for the player, to look forward to content that will involve that location or will be disappointing as your venture will at most yield you 10 magicked ash. 

In terms of history and writing, State of the Realm and The Thousand Tomes along with the hunts system and side quests go a long way to making the world feel like it has depth. Harpocrates for example, progressively discovers more and more about Valisthean history as the game goes on. Everything is recorded or discovered to feel like we are taking an active part of history taking shape. The ability to look back at past events and identify when, why, and how something along with a number of other nuances such as character relationships and political meetings, then discover how they may relate to current events in ways that weren't clear before. It leaves no stone unturned.

The side quests, likely the most controversial part of the game, are banking completely on your enjoyment through intrinsic value. The rewards are terrible, the quest design can be just as rote and mind numbing as certain sections of the main quest, and they aren’t long sprawling storylines. It asks you to approach them with respect to what they offer in dialogue and writing only, and that is a very tall ask for a video game when even that can just not be enough. But if you manage to somehow enjoy these side quests like myself, you will be presented with an adoration for your surroundings and some genuinely earnest dialogue. It enhances the story and even in some ways expands it beyond what the main story offers. They show your impact on your surroundings like NPCs placing their trust in you specifically due to having experience with you prior, they show little progressive moments such as being able to cultivate life and crops in the blight, and even the sheer reliance on crystals for everyday activities.

The OST doesn’t reach the consistency or variety of FFXIV itself, I wasn’t expecting it to. But that’s okay because it’s an extremely high bar to reach, and when the soundtrack shows out, it really shows out. The songs that play during each eikon fight to ramp up the intensity vs the chill tranquility that exemplifies what world people are fighting for. It's much more hyper focused and attuned to the game’s emotion at any given settlement, action scene, or story moment is appreciated and different from its predecessor. It really shows Masayoshi Soken’s versatility. 

Combat & Gameplay

Unlike side quests, this entirely hinges on extrinsic value. It wants you to experiment, branch out, try out different playstyles, skills, loadouts, etc. because you want to and not because the game told you to. It’s a fantastic and rewarding experience when you finally get together a loadout that fits precisely for you. But if you find something that works for you very early on, giving you little reason to branch out and explore, it’ll become a quick reminder on why action games are typically only 10-12 hours. 

        This is not helped by the lack of RPG mechanics and despite the bestiary being pretty wide and diverse, having a runtime of 30-70 hours makes later encounters feel samey. I would have liked some more buff/debuff related skills and even some weapons that have effects similar to accessories but better and more differing attack/stagger stats. The biggest culprit of this being the lack of aggressiveness and push-over nature from smaller enemies as if they were lining up waiting for you to combo them. It would be mitigated if there were some interesting gearing or crafting options available, but there isn’t. There is depth, there are synergistic builds to make, there are even some bosses that may make you feel like you need to switch up your build because your playstyle is annoying or not as effective to use. You simply have to look for it because the base game/difficulty will not ask it of you, and it is my biggest issue with the game. It is just too easy for me. FF mode is a fantastic change of pace from the normal mode with more aggressive enemies and scarier damage numbers. However, the base game experience NEEDED something more challenging because after a certain point, a stage can get folded for just knowing the game mechanics. It needed more content like the S-ranks hunts, which is without a doubt the most engaging side content the game offers.

The dungeons are also completely corridors with no puzzles or blockades. There will be an ever so slight branch to hide a chest that you can receive accessories from, but nothing ever sprawling with traps or dead ends. The team made it so absolutely nothing is miss-able or a hindrance to the game flow, but again this approach takes away from the RPG feeling and is a holdover from the dungeon design of FFXIV, there is no friction. While I love my in-depth dungeon crawling as a Shin Megami Tensei and Ys fan, I personally prefer dungeons this way as I care more about my game flow than explorable dungeons. I find linear ventures that are hyper focused provide me the best experience with encounters and opportunities to just mess around and have fun with my kit. 

Story

The story isn’t as mature as the marketing let it on to be. It’s filled with plenty of tropes and falls into some traps but it certainly doesn’t feel any different from the likes of FFXII, XIV, and Tactics Ogre. It tells a beautiful story on individuality and love. Majority of the story is about political leaders progressively stripping away not just the human rights of bearers but everything within the game world, they force innocent people to endure war for the sake of an Empire, snatch family away for status, steal and violate moral codes, manipulate people’s most pure emotions, and more. 

If you parallel a lot of what the story comments on, it becomes very apparent that the state of the world is very similar to real life. Damage to the environment (The Blight), oil wells (Mothercrystals), racism, blind faith to the church as the highest power (Barnabas and Waloed), people as tools for the state (Capitalism), and centrists who are arguably the most soulless people on earth (The Main Villain). Hell, even the obscuring of history in order to preserve the current state of the world (History of Bearer Slavery and Waloed). Clive's answer to these wasn't always the best one, it makes Clive a flawed character, but it was also about how those flaws still make you who you are and how people can still love you for them. Was it the best idea to deprive people of Waloed their savior and practically find their only retreat in becoming mindless slaves? Is it the best solution to deprive a nation of their eikon, the only protection they have from invasion? 

The story has a lot of depth because the plot was never about politics, the plot was how politics gets in the way of being a good person and forcing people to go to lengths they didn’t desire. It’s very real, albeit in a very truncated and therefore idealist way. Towards the end the story expands the scope with the main villain taking center stage, and while not an interesting character, they feel like they fit pretty squarely into this game’s themes. It leads to what feels like a shout from the heavens that you should under no circumstance give away the only thing that you can truly call yours. 

The characters round out the product. This is one of the best casts and supporting casts in a game. The only characters I’m disappointed with happen to all be women, Benedikta, Annabelle, and Jill. Jill specifically is awesome, collected, has a ton of chemistry with Clive, and is a beautifully designed character. She gets some really amazing and personal scenes, and again interacts with Clive in very earnest ways. However she falls into the same unfortunate pitfall that the other two do, not enough time, and it makes experiencing her character pretty middling as she stands to the side as we experience Clive’s story. 

The rest of the characters I found to be a very tight knit, strong, functioning community. It feels really good playing the side quests and they involve another or several other characters for some small activity for characterization and worldbuilding. The key to it all is Cid, one of the most impactful characters to a piece of media I’ve ever seen. He is omnipresent, and even when he’s not in the scene he is felt.

FFXVI uses its runtime to approach mature themes with straightforward answers to the problems. It doesn’t shy away from nuance or depth to situations but it attempts to make its thoughts on topics such as slavery and individuality very clear and concise. Is it justifiable that slavery exists to beat down and torture people who had no say in how they were born? Not at all, and it especially makes sure to never shy away from exacting revenge on those who wronged you. 

No character is criticized for the pursuit of giving their tormentors a taste of their own medicine. You see more depth in the writing when you experience how the public perceives the actions in pursuit of liberation, the influence the church may have on your outlook, the lengths you have to take to make a statement, the manipulation of history to perpetuate the status quo, even whether or not a demographic DESIRES the treatment they receive (pertaining to a cultist side quest in Waloed). It’s a variety of takes and opinions that converge into one singular answer that doesn’t need to be and shouldn’t be morally gray. In a world where a lot of media is scared to stay true to its racism and slavery or even revenge themes, backpedaling to not seem too preachy, it’s refreshing to play a game that wears it on its chest straight to the credits. 

That being said, just like the side quests, the main story quests fall victim to the same rote and busy quest design and structure that I’m used to but most will not be ready to weather. I genuinely enjoyed the slower moments, there is one specific stretch of the game that I wasn’t able to enjoy but the rest, it felt like they were always teaching me something or introducing me to characters/plot points that will be brought back later either in main story, side quests, or both. With the slower moments thoroughly enjoyed, I was able to experience peaks that made me think “Wow I can’t believe game’s can do this' '. The absolute matching of spectacle to the story they want to tell.

To close, FFXVI is one of the strongest experiences for a game that is attuned to my tastes specifically, and in the cases where it isn’t, it’s a minor issue with the exception of difficulty. It’s my current Game of the Year and among my Top 5 experiences ever. The world is beautiful, there’s plenty of mysteries and depth to make an interesting world, the majority of characters are very sufficiently built and connected, and the main story stays strong and true to itself for its entire runtime.