On the mechanical flatness of Final Fantasy XVI
On the mechanical flatness of Final Fantasy XVI
I finished FFXVI yesterday and I have an urge to share some thoughts. I guess this is a review of sorts.
Visuals
Yes, the graphics are very high quality, but this game is a prime example of the fact that strong art direction has been more relevant since PS2. Most of the game is medieval towns and meadows. Don't get me wrong, they are beautiful, well implemented medieval towns and meadows, but just so utterly uninteresting.
But credit where credit is due, the fallen ruins are magnificent. Ancient ruins is such a well-trod trope that it's impressive they managed to make them feel fresh, while still fully evoking a feeling of ancientness. If only they could have an equally distinct approach to the idea of a medieval town.
The eikon fights were spectacular, but I eventually got bored with them, as all the spectacle was very samey after a while.
Story
I liked it. The worldbuilding and the character writing were excellent, and the political scheming worked much better than in eg. FFXII. It lost a bit of steam after all the human antagonists were gone, as Ultima just wasn't very interesting, but the well-establish characters carried it to the end.
Also the writing side of side quests was good. They fleshed out the world and the characters, almost nothing felt like a meaningless errand. I ended up doing all the side quests, not because of an explicit decision, but because they felt narratively worth doing.
Mechanics
This is where the core of my gripes comes in. The game felt so disappointingly flat on a mechanical level.
First of all, almost nothing in this game makes a meaningful difference Examples:
- You go to pick up an item on the map. It's 15 gil. 15. At a time when weapons cost thousands. Almost every item pick-up was a disappointment, there is hardly any reward for exploration.
- Combos. As far as I can tell, the reward for performing a 4-strike combo was that the last strike did 50% more damage. That comes to 1+1+1+1.5/4 = 1.125. A 12.5% advantage. This is supposed to be a core feature of combat and it barely gives a double digit increase.
- Items that boost skills for 8%. An entire accessory slot dedicated to a skill I get to use once a minute, and they have the gall to give it a bonus below double digit.
- Limit breaks, LIMIT BREAKS, give a damage bonus of 10%.
- A new weapon is always 5 points better than the last one, always with equal stagger and attack. Only Ragnarok and Gotterdammerung were meaningful bumps.
- Every weapon has equal stagger and attack values. Why even have separate values, if you aren't going to give the player a choice on which to prioritize.
- Top-tier armor giving 50 extra hp when the current total is over 2000.
- Even staggering, arguably the most central mechanism, gives a maximum of 50% advantage. 50% for 10 seconds once every minute. Bleh.
I can only presume that they did this to balance the action combat. Slower paced combat is about making interesting decisions before and during the combat, action combat is just about being good at pressing buttons at the right times. People who enjoy action combat seem to feel very positively about it in this game so they apparently succeeded. I just wish they didn't do it at the cost of removing every single mechanically interesting decision in the whole game.
Summary
In the end I just switched to Story Focused and breezed through. It was an enjoyable enough experience, but left me dissatisfied. I'm glad the action people are happy, but I need to go and play some game with actual decisions for a change.
PS. Yes, choosing your skill layout is the one mechanically meaningful decision you can make, and is fine. The skills are, a bit too well-balanced relative to each other to make this more than a stylistic choice. The only thing that really matters in combat is dodging and parrying, which are admittedly satisfying.
I haven't finished the game yet, I'm a little over half way through, but my biggest gripe is the combat. It's not bad, but it's not good either. It's just boring at times.
It was enjoyable finding the winning combination of skills, but now that I have, I'm just melting the bosses no problem.
And that's my next issue, the skills. It takes WAY to many points to master them. If this could be done easier I think it would be a better system for mixing and matching eikons. My goal currently is to take lighting rod and judgement bolt mixed with titanic block. But to accomplish this takes roughly 10k AP.
I'm very much enjoying the story, the side quests are better than FF7R, and I'm surprisingly doing all the hunts this time. It's a good game, just wish the combat was a little faster.
I used the accessory that gives you 20% bonus AP for normal fights. That and the ability to refund skills I didn't use made AP a non-issue by the halfway point. Especially since the upgrades were not very interesting for the most part, except for being able to mix between eidolons.
Yeah, the massive piles of HP bosses and mini bosses had was the main reason I switched to Story Focused. It simply was not fun to do the same things in a loop that many times. I think the game would benefit tremendeously from adding a generous stacking damage bonus for combos, and making staggers scale up to 300%, like in earlier FF:s. That would make combat proficiency more rewarding. Also the skill bonus damage accessories should be more like 50%, giving your favourite skills a real boost.
I agree, the cost of abilities seems too high, particularly since most of the abilities are...uh...not useful or important? I'm also a bit past halfway through the game now, and I feel like if I had nothing besides flaming sword and charged magic, then it wouldn't change the game in any meaningful way. It's also unclear how upgrading or mastering an ability actually improves it.
Partly, that's just the nature of action combat. It's about the action, and the rest is flavor. But other action RPGs do better. The decisions and skills in Elden Ring were very meaningful, and FF7R let you customize your characters to lean into a variety of different strategies. In 16 I don't feel like I have a choice in how to play. The combat is so heavily tilted toward basic attacks and dodging. I enjoy the fast pace, and I enjoy cracking the code of each boss like it's a Mega Man game, but...well it doesn't feel like Final Fantasy to me.
The upgrade gives it improved damage, where mastery literally does nothing but allow you to assign the ability to a different eikon. For all the points you put into these, I really feel you should get a lot more out of them.
Essentially, I don't master any of them with the exception "phoenix shift, deadly embrace, etc." The abilities mapped to Circle on the gamepad. These are the only abilities that when Mastered give some kind of buff.
That was very interesting thank you. I didn't even looked at trailers as I was quite bored with the "generic" feeling I had with FF since 13. But your appraisal of the story makes want to try. It's particularly important when exploration is not well rewarded in those kind of games... Can I ask how long I took you to finish it ?
According to the PS5 timer, precisely 60 hours. That's with all the side quests (and half the hunts), with Story Mode switched on from around halfway.
I’m just coming toward the end (94%). I’m sitting at 61hr in action mode, all side quests and all but 3 hunts so far. I’ve not looked at things like the Eikon Trials and Arête Stone challenges though, and I’ve got the other in game collectibles to get if I decide to.
Agree with a lot of what you said. To me it’s the best FF since X (XIV aside since I haven’t played and not an MMO guy)
Back in the day FF naturally became a “tick, tock” release when every second game was a “story driven” game and another is a “mechanic driven” game. Interviews suggests that this was just because after working on one, they want a break and focus on something else.
I saw this game thinking it was a “story” release. So I went in just caring about the story and the characters. I really ended up loving both. The performances on some of the big scenes are an absolute gut punch and I really felt it.
There are problems with pacing and dialogue. But the emotional journey was there and well worth a play.
“What if we made devil may cry, but clunky, slow and bad?”
I’m halfway or so through the game and I just can’t see myself finishing it. The writing is fine, you can tell they wanted a Game of Thrones vibe and that was a choice.
But the combat is not good, and there’s so much of it to slog through. Enemies are rarely a challenge, but everything beyond the most basic enemies is a giant sack of hp without enough mechanical complexity to justify how many times you have to tap Square to get through it.