RPG Diary

Final Fantasy XVI

While my plan to play all of the Final Fantasy games was well underway when Final Fantasy XVI was released, I did not own a PS5 at the time. Now that I have one, I can finally play the most recent game and claim to have played every game in the series. I didn't follow the pre-release hype and I've managed to avoid spoilers, so I'm going into this one fairly blind.

Title	Final Fantasy XVI
Year	2023
System	PS5
Developer	Square Enix
Publisher	Square Enix

This was the first game in the series with a M rating. There are several violent and bloody scenes, and there is a lot of profanity. This was jarring for me at first as it didn't feel like Final Fantasy, but I got over it eventually. While the series has always had dark themes and brutal moments, I wasn't comfortable playing the main story in front of my children, so it was harder for me to find time to play.

As expected of the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XVI has a big story with a lot of dialogue. There is a lot of politics and intrigue which reminded me of Final Fantasy XII. However, I thought this game does a much better job balancing that with the individual characters and their motives.

Overall, I enjoyed the story. There's a lot going on in this game and I was surprised by a few of the plot twists. I was a little disappointed how some of the plotlines turned out to be somewhat insigificant in the end. I was particuarly interested in both the second dominant of fire and Anabella's scheming, but both of those plotlines kind of fizzled out unsatisfyingly. (I still don't really understand what actually happened at Phoenix Gate in the prologue.) I also thought the final villain did not explain their motives very well, so I lost some interest towards the end of the game.

Perhaps the most controversial thing about Final Fantasy XVI is the combat. Personally, I didn't think it was that big of a leap from Final Fantasy XV. I enjoyed unlocking new abilities during the game, but it seemed like many of them were not that useful. Smaller enemies are laughable, so the only things that really mattered were staggering large enemies quickly and dealing burst damage during the stagger. I did quite enjoy the eikon battle sequences as they were exciting and broke up the monotony.

The worst part of the game are the boring fetch quests, and thus most of the side quests. I thought there was generally good pacing and balance between the story scenes and the gameplay, but the tedious fetch quests just grind everything to a halt. The vast majority of side quests in this game are just a bunch of bland dialogue, marching across the map, and maybe a fight against some common enemies. Worse, most of these quests only grant common commodities as rewards, which makes the whole thing a waste of time. Of course, side quests are optional, so most of these can be skipped entirely. The few side quests that actually bestow something useful are even marked with a different symbol in-game, seemingly acknowledging that everything else is filler. Unfortunately, there are some mandatory fetch quests mid-game that cannot be avoided — this part was easily the worst section of the story.

I was also disappointed that gear and levels did not seem particularly important. While there are visible stats, the gains are small and I never noticed any big improvements after upgrading or leveling up. (Power jumps were primarily due to new abilities instead.) In my opinion, these are defining fetures of the RPG genre, so you could argue that Final Fantasy XVI is more of an (story-rich) action game than an RPG.

After completing a game, I add it to my overall enjoyment ranking which orders the games I've completed from those I most enjoyed to those I least enjoyed. I generally enjoyed Final Fantasy XVI, but the side quests were awful filler that dragged the game out. I'll place it below Final Fantasy IV which was more streamlined and consistent.