Final Fantasy XVI review _ More action, less RPG

**A Shallow RPG Experience: The Disappointments of Final Fantasy 16**

As I delved into the world of Final Fantasy 16, I couldn't help but feel that something was amiss. Despite being an action-packed game with a rich open field area to explore, the overall experience felt shallow and uninspired. One of the main issues with the game is its potion system, which seems to be more of a chore than a fun aspect of the gameplay. You can only hold four potions at a time, and even high-quality potions are limited in number, making it feel like a necessary evil rather than an enjoyable part of the experience.

Furthermore, the game's crafting system, while interesting on paper, feels underutilized and unnecessary. With thousands of crafting materials accumulated throughout the game, there is little reason to craft new gear or upgrade existing equipment, as the best gear can be purchased or upgraded with ease. This results in a large amount of materials gathering that doesn't really provide any benefits, making it feel like busy work rather than an engaging aspect of the gameplay.

The exploration of open field areas also feels underwhelming due to their dated design and lack of purpose. The fields are filled with loose enemies, but these encounters can be easily obtained through other means, such as massive boss fights. There's little incentive to explore these areas, except for the occasional optional subquest or collectible. Even then, the rewards are often minimal, consisting mainly of gold and crafting materials that are not essential to progress.

Speaking of subquests, they feel like a necessary evil in the game. Most of them involve lengthy conversations with NPCs, followed by menial tasks such as gathering resources or fighting brief boss battles. These subquests seem to be more of a way to advance the story rather than providing any meaningful rewards or gameplay experiences. The format is often templated and feels AI-generated, making each encounter feel formulaic and unengaging.

The issue with subquests is that they can quickly become tedious and feel like a chore to complete. With too much repetition and not enough variety, these tasks start to lose their appeal. This is further exacerbated by the fact that there's little reward for completing them, other than perhaps some gold or crafting materials. These resources are not essential to progress, making it hard to see the point in spending time on subquests.

The game's focus on action and spectacle feels like a missed opportunity to deliver a more immersive RPG experience. The character of Clive Rosfield is an example of this, as he struggles with his past and tries to move forward. This theme is lost amidst the game's attempts to balance action and role-playing elements, resulting in a disjointed experience that fails to engage.

**A Transition Gone Wrong**

For Square Enix, Final Fantasy 16 feels like a transitional game, trying to get players accustomed to the idea of Final Fantasy being a pure action game. While this might be a good approach for some fans, it's not necessarily the best direction for the series as a whole. The game's attempt to blend action and RPG elements results in a shallow experience that fails to deliver on its promises.

In my opinion, Square Enix needs to take cues from one of the icons in Final Fantasy 16, such as the Phoenix, to create a new vision for the series. The Phoenix represents a clean slate, a chance to start anew and explore fresh ideas. By abandoning some of the traditional RPG elements that have made Final Fantasy great, the series can focus on what truly matters: delivering engaging gameplay experiences that leave players wanting more.

Ultimately, my experience with Final Fantasy 16 was one of disappointment and frustration. While it has its moments, the game's shallow design and lackluster features hold it back from being a truly memorable RPG experience. As I reflect on my time with the game, I'm left wondering what could have been if Square Enix had taken more risks and focused on delivering a more engaging, immersive experience.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat makes a Final Fantasy game a final fantasy is it the classic turn-based combat is it Whimsical characters like mughals is it Grand RPG storytelling or is it simply just the name I think that's a question that fans are going to be asking themselves quite a lot with Final Fantasy 16 a game that is sure to be the most polarizing entry in the franchise's history hi I'm Giovanni colantonio I'm the gaming section lead here at digitaltrends.com and I'm here with my review of Final Fantasy 16. now before we start I just want to let you know that we are going to be showing some game footage from this that includes some story cut scenes but any footage that we're showing here is more or less from the first six or seven hours of the game and avoids any Major Spoilers so just a friendly heads up let's get this done Final Fantasy 16 is a really important moment for the series for a long time now Square Enix has been transitioning Final Fantasy from a turn-based classic RPG to an action RPG that feels a little bit more modern this game is the most confident Approach at that yet with a major emphasis on action and a major de-emphasis on RPG that's something that creates a lot of tension within the game design in this and we're going to talk about that a lot in this review but before we do that I want to talk just broadly about the story Final Fantasy 16 is a much darker entry of this series it tells the story of Clive rossfield a character who is on a bloody quest for Revenge after a tragedy befalls his royal family it kind of plays out like this gigantic version of Kill Bill where Clive has to cut down dominance who are these characters within the world of Final Fantasy XV that are the living embodiment of summons from the series past those are called icons here you truly think a dominant's waiting for us in that village now that Dynamic is actually really interesting you get this really Grand mythology heavy story that contrasts with this incredibly personal story about a character who is dealing with this Trauma from his childhood and desperately trying to move on from it even though it keeps haunting him now unfortunately that's not really the full story of Final Fantasy 16 that part of it is more of an intro that's really just the First Act of the game and it wraps up in this really disappointing and abrupt manner before moving on to this broader story worry about Kingdoms At War and crystals and I think there are some people who are going to love that part of the game final fantasy has always featured dense World building like that and that's certainly here for most of the game for me it's a little disappointing to start with this really personal story that I got invested in and haven't moved to something that admittedly is a lot more dry but I want to go back to Clive's Arc because I think that story about a character that is trying to move forward and carve his own path towards the future but being weighed down by his past is actually the story of Final Fantasy 16 at large this is very much a game that feels like Square Enix trying to do something new from the series while still attempting to maintain some of the Staples that make Final Fantasy Final Fantasy and the more it moves away and confidently tries to be its own new game the better it is and the more it sticks to those old things the more trouble it runs into let's talk about the good half of that equation first the action in this game is genuinely fantastic now when Clive fights he has a really modern basic attack system where he has a normal slash a magic attack a Dodge a Perry the things that you would expect from an action game in 2023 but the twist is he also gets different iconic magic sets that all have different powers each one of them has different skills that work on a cooldown as well as a special ability specific to that class and Clive can equip three of these at a time allowing him to mix and match a lot of different things so for example if he equips Fire magic he gets this really powerful close range magic and the ability to Blink Dash towards enemies so that he can get in close wind Magic on the other hand is a little more aerial based and he has the ability to yank enemies towards him Earth Magic on the other hand is really powerful but requires a timing based wind-up and also he gets the ability to Shield against powerful incoming damage and that system is fantastic allowing for tons of creativity when it comes to comboing together different skills and abilities a lot of fun of this game comes from finding your own play Style finding which skills really match together well and fluidly move into one another there's a lot of fun that comes from trying to melt down an enemy's stagger bar as fast as humanly possible it's incredibly satisfying and something that I think is going to make for some amazing combo videos in the next couple of months it feels a lot like Devil May Cry and that is no coincidence because the lead combat designer on this game worked on Devil May Cry Now that part of the action is amazing but it's actually not even the part that I'm most excited about that would be the icon battles in the major boss battles in this game Clive takes on the form of efreet and fights against different icons and summons from Final Fantasy history all of those fights are incredibly cinematic Larger than Life Kaiju battles between giant monsters and they are totally totally different from one another the first icon battle in this game is a flashy 3D space shooter that feels like a modern reimagining of Panzer Dragoon a later one has me moving down a half pipe like Sonic the Hedgehog and dodging incoming attacks and that's only one fourth of that battle it is a giant ever-changing 30 minute fight that is one of the best boss fights I've ever played in a video game in fact a lot of these fights I think you could argue are some of the best and most detailed boss fights that have ever been put into a game it's also worth mentioning that these icon battles look incredible I mean these are some of the best visuals that you will see on the PS5 if not in video games at large granted those visuals are not consistent throughout this game so be prepared while you're gonna see these incredible cutscenes you're also going to see NPCs that look like they stepped out of the PS3 you can really feel where the budget was spent in this game and that also creates a little bit of tension do with us what you will there's also some inconsistent performance that I experienced during this I especially noticed that in the last area where the frame rate started to stutter a little bit more it does look great and perform okay enough overall but just be prepared for those hiccups you're not going to get a smooth 60 frames per second the entire game until it's patched now that's the part of this game that I think really shines and it's the part of the game that feels really new too it feels like Square Enix trying to actually hit the scope that these classic Final Fantasy games always teased at they are massive Larger than Life and really get at the spectacular fantasy element that makes it feel like a huge Blockbuster if Final Fantasy is going to keep with its action element I think this is the way to go and all of that strong action makes for what I think would be an incredible 10 to 12 hour game that's focused fast and fun but unfortunately Final Fantasy 16 is not 10 to 12 hours long it is more like 40 to 70 and that is where some of the problems start to arise so Final Fantasy 16 is an RPG but I use that term very very lightly to set your expectations in fact this is less of an RPG than God of War Ragnarok or even Street Fighter 6's world tour mode there's just not actually that much customization in the game and you would think that wouldn't be too big of a deal but it actually breaks huge parts of this game and turns them into a little bit of a slog so here's an example of how the systems in this game start to break down because of these shallow systems Clive has a couple of gear slots in this game he has three slots for accessories a weapon slot and two clothing slots now you would think that those weapon and clothing slots would give you a lot of room to experiment and build out your character in an interesting way that's not actually the case the only thing that's different about weapons and clothing is that the ones you get later will have higher stats than the one you get earlier in the game so there's no reason to ever buy a piece of gear that's not just the one with the highest number that left me with a wealth of gold in this game that I literally could not spend and it's not like I could spend it on items either because this game caps you at how many potions you can hold for most of the game you can only hold four potions and two high potions you could not spend the money in this game if you wanted to now in addition to that there is a crafting system where you can make new weapons and gear and upgrade your existing weapons in gear but again there's not really a ton of reason to do that because you are only ever going to be buying or upgrading to the thing with the highest stats so by the end of the game I had thousands and thousands of crafting materials that I again literally could not do anything with so that ends up being a problem for a couple of different reasons for one it hurts the exploration in this game final fantasy 16 does have open field area is where you can go and explore but frankly there's no good reason to for one these areas are dated in their design they feel like they came out of a PS3 game like the original near there's just not much to see or do in them you can fight some loose enemies to get a little bit of experience but you're gonna get most of your experience in the massive fights anyways so there's not really much of a point to force yourself to level up there's also not really a good reason to explore these spaces because any optional space that exists in these areas is only there for the sake of a subquest later on there is going to be nothing in it until you trigger that subquest and then there will be nothing in it after that now the only other reason that you might want to explore is to find Collectibles around the world but you're mostly going to find gold and crafting materials and as we said there is not a good reason to have a lot of gold or crafting materials in this game so there's not a lot of good reason to just walk around and explore and this issue gets a lot worse with subquests which are the most disappointing part of this game Subway question Final Fantasy 16 are really nothing to write home about most of them just have you talking to a dead-eyed NPC for a long conversation and then you're asked to go to a field and gather a couple of materials and come back for a five minute conversation or to go and do a 30-second boss fight and then come back for more lore they're really just a way to get more World building into the game and again there might be some people who love that there might be some people who just want to do a small quick task and get more of those conversations about how this world works but frankly it just feels really uninspired a lot of these subquests are just templatized and have you doing the same thing over and over again to the point where they almost feel a little AI generated and again that might not be a problem if the rewards for doing these subquests were worth it but the rewards for doing these subquests are largely gold and crafting materials and again as we said you do not need poor gold and crafting materials in this game and that's a problem that goes throughout out Final Fantasy 16. there's just a lot of fluff in this game that is just there because an RPG needs to have those things but they don't really function within a shallow RPG system they feel out of place it really feels like Square Enix wanted to build a pure action game but felt that they needed these other components and half-heartedly put them in it makes for an experience that feels like busy work it's slow and it's plotting and just feels like a thing that I have to do to get to those cool icon battles I have to find out and I'm returning back now I think all of this is going to sit with players in a really different way which is going to give this game a really polarizing response but for me I find the experience really uneven I love what Square Enix is doing with action in this game but a lot of other things feel like they're obligatory like they have to be there because that's what we expect from a Final Fantasy game and that's again where I go back to Clive rossfield and his Arc he is a character who wants to push forward he's not a character who wants to be defined and held back by his past he wants to be his own person but he has to deal with that before he can move on and that's what Final Fantasy 16 is to me it's a transitional game where Square Enix is getting people used to the idea of Final Fantasy being a pure action game while still trying to deliver on fan expectations of what a Final Fantasy game should be personally I think the final fantasy series needs to take some cues from one of the icons in Final Fantasy 16 the Phoenix if Square Enix just wants to make a new version of Final Fantasy that's all action and spectacle I say that's fine but you need to let the old Final Fantasy die so that a new one can rise anewwhat makes a Final Fantasy game a final fantasy is it the classic turn-based combat is it Whimsical characters like mughals is it Grand RPG storytelling or is it simply just the name I think that's a question that fans are going to be asking themselves quite a lot with Final Fantasy 16 a game that is sure to be the most polarizing entry in the franchise's history hi I'm Giovanni colantonio I'm the gaming section lead here at digitaltrends.com and I'm here with my review of Final Fantasy 16. now before we start I just want to let you know that we are going to be showing some game footage from this that includes some story cut scenes but any footage that we're showing here is more or less from the first six or seven hours of the game and avoids any Major Spoilers so just a friendly heads up let's get this done Final Fantasy 16 is a really important moment for the series for a long time now Square Enix has been transitioning Final Fantasy from a turn-based classic RPG to an action RPG that feels a little bit more modern this game is the most confident Approach at that yet with a major emphasis on action and a major de-emphasis on RPG that's something that creates a lot of tension within the game design in this and we're going to talk about that a lot in this review but before we do that I want to talk just broadly about the story Final Fantasy 16 is a much darker entry of this series it tells the story of Clive rossfield a character who is on a bloody quest for Revenge after a tragedy befalls his royal family it kind of plays out like this gigantic version of Kill Bill where Clive has to cut down dominance who are these characters within the world of Final Fantasy XV that are the living embodiment of summons from the series past those are called icons here you truly think a dominant's waiting for us in that village now that Dynamic is actually really interesting you get this really Grand mythology heavy story that contrasts with this incredibly personal story about a character who is dealing with this Trauma from his childhood and desperately trying to move on from it even though it keeps haunting him now unfortunately that's not really the full story of Final Fantasy 16 that part of it is more of an intro that's really just the First Act of the game and it wraps up in this really disappointing and abrupt manner before moving on to this broader story worry about Kingdoms At War and crystals and I think there are some people who are going to love that part of the game final fantasy has always featured dense World building like that and that's certainly here for most of the game for me it's a little disappointing to start with this really personal story that I got invested in and haven't moved to something that admittedly is a lot more dry but I want to go back to Clive's Arc because I think that story about a character that is trying to move forward and carve his own path towards the future but being weighed down by his past is actually the story of Final Fantasy 16 at large this is very much a game that feels like Square Enix trying to do something new from the series while still attempting to maintain some of the Staples that make Final Fantasy Final Fantasy and the more it moves away and confidently tries to be its own new game the better it is and the more it sticks to those old things the more trouble it runs into let's talk about the good half of that equation first the action in this game is genuinely fantastic now when Clive fights he has a really modern basic attack system where he has a normal slash a magic attack a Dodge a Perry the things that you would expect from an action game in 2023 but the twist is he also gets different iconic magic sets that all have different powers each one of them has different skills that work on a cooldown as well as a special ability specific to that class and Clive can equip three of these at a time allowing him to mix and match a lot of different things so for example if he equips Fire magic he gets this really powerful close range magic and the ability to Blink Dash towards enemies so that he can get in close wind Magic on the other hand is a little more aerial based and he has the ability to yank enemies towards him Earth Magic on the other hand is really powerful but requires a timing based wind-up and also he gets the ability to Shield against powerful incoming damage and that system is fantastic allowing for tons of creativity when it comes to comboing together different skills and abilities a lot of fun of this game comes from finding your own play Style finding which skills really match together well and fluidly move into one another there's a lot of fun that comes from trying to melt down an enemy's stagger bar as fast as humanly possible it's incredibly satisfying and something that I think is going to make for some amazing combo videos in the next couple of months it feels a lot like Devil May Cry and that is no coincidence because the lead combat designer on this game worked on Devil May Cry Now that part of the action is amazing but it's actually not even the part that I'm most excited about that would be the icon battles in the major boss battles in this game Clive takes on the form of efreet and fights against different icons and summons from Final Fantasy history all of those fights are incredibly cinematic Larger than Life Kaiju battles between giant monsters and they are totally totally different from one another the first icon battle in this game is a flashy 3D space shooter that feels like a modern reimagining of Panzer Dragoon a later one has me moving down a half pipe like Sonic the Hedgehog and dodging incoming attacks and that's only one fourth of that battle it is a giant ever-changing 30 minute fight that is one of the best boss fights I've ever played in a video game in fact a lot of these fights I think you could argue are some of the best and most detailed boss fights that have ever been put into a game it's also worth mentioning that these icon battles look incredible I mean these are some of the best visuals that you will see on the PS5 if not in video games at large granted those visuals are not consistent throughout this game so be prepared while you're gonna see these incredible cutscenes you're also going to see NPCs that look like they stepped out of the PS3 you can really feel where the budget was spent in this game and that also creates a little bit of tension do with us what you will there's also some inconsistent performance that I experienced during this I especially noticed that in the last area where the frame rate started to stutter a little bit more it does look great and perform okay enough overall but just be prepared for those hiccups you're not going to get a smooth 60 frames per second the entire game until it's patched now that's the part of this game that I think really shines and it's the part of the game that feels really new too it feels like Square Enix trying to actually hit the scope that these classic Final Fantasy games always teased at they are massive Larger than Life and really get at the spectacular fantasy element that makes it feel like a huge Blockbuster if Final Fantasy is going to keep with its action element I think this is the way to go and all of that strong action makes for what I think would be an incredible 10 to 12 hour game that's focused fast and fun but unfortunately Final Fantasy 16 is not 10 to 12 hours long it is more like 40 to 70 and that is where some of the problems start to arise so Final Fantasy 16 is an RPG but I use that term very very lightly to set your expectations in fact this is less of an RPG than God of War Ragnarok or even Street Fighter 6's world tour mode there's just not actually that much customization in the game and you would think that wouldn't be too big of a deal but it actually breaks huge parts of this game and turns them into a little bit of a slog so here's an example of how the systems in this game start to break down because of these shallow systems Clive has a couple of gear slots in this game he has three slots for accessories a weapon slot and two clothing slots now you would think that those weapon and clothing slots would give you a lot of room to experiment and build out your character in an interesting way that's not actually the case the only thing that's different about weapons and clothing is that the ones you get later will have higher stats than the one you get earlier in the game so there's no reason to ever buy a piece of gear that's not just the one with the highest number that left me with a wealth of gold in this game that I literally could not spend and it's not like I could spend it on items either because this game caps you at how many potions you can hold for most of the game you can only hold four potions and two high potions you could not spend the money in this game if you wanted to now in addition to that there is a crafting system where you can make new weapons and gear and upgrade your existing weapons in gear but again there's not really a ton of reason to do that because you are only ever going to be buying or upgrading to the thing with the highest stats so by the end of the game I had thousands and thousands of crafting materials that I again literally could not do anything with so that ends up being a problem for a couple of different reasons for one it hurts the exploration in this game final fantasy 16 does have open field area is where you can go and explore but frankly there's no good reason to for one these areas are dated in their design they feel like they came out of a PS3 game like the original near there's just not much to see or do in them you can fight some loose enemies to get a little bit of experience but you're gonna get most of your experience in the massive fights anyways so there's not really much of a point to force yourself to level up there's also not really a good reason to explore these spaces because any optional space that exists in these areas is only there for the sake of a subquest later on there is going to be nothing in it until you trigger that subquest and then there will be nothing in it after that now the only other reason that you might want to explore is to find Collectibles around the world but you're mostly going to find gold and crafting materials and as we said there is not a good reason to have a lot of gold or crafting materials in this game so there's not a lot of good reason to just walk around and explore and this issue gets a lot worse with subquests which are the most disappointing part of this game Subway question Final Fantasy 16 are really nothing to write home about most of them just have you talking to a dead-eyed NPC for a long conversation and then you're asked to go to a field and gather a couple of materials and come back for a five minute conversation or to go and do a 30-second boss fight and then come back for more lore they're really just a way to get more World building into the game and again there might be some people who love that there might be some people who just want to do a small quick task and get more of those conversations about how this world works but frankly it just feels really uninspired a lot of these subquests are just templatized and have you doing the same thing over and over again to the point where they almost feel a little AI generated and again that might not be a problem if the rewards for doing these subquests were worth it but the rewards for doing these subquests are largely gold and crafting materials and again as we said you do not need poor gold and crafting materials in this game and that's a problem that goes throughout out Final Fantasy 16. there's just a lot of fluff in this game that is just there because an RPG needs to have those things but they don't really function within a shallow RPG system they feel out of place it really feels like Square Enix wanted to build a pure action game but felt that they needed these other components and half-heartedly put them in it makes for an experience that feels like busy work it's slow and it's plotting and just feels like a thing that I have to do to get to those cool icon battles I have to find out and I'm returning back now I think all of this is going to sit with players in a really different way which is going to give this game a really polarizing response but for me I find the experience really uneven I love what Square Enix is doing with action in this game but a lot of other things feel like they're obligatory like they have to be there because that's what we expect from a Final Fantasy game and that's again where I go back to Clive rossfield and his Arc he is a character who wants to push forward he's not a character who wants to be defined and held back by his past he wants to be his own person but he has to deal with that before he can move on and that's what Final Fantasy 16 is to me it's a transitional game where Square Enix is getting people used to the idea of Final Fantasy being a pure action game while still trying to deliver on fan expectations of what a Final Fantasy game should be personally I think the final fantasy series needs to take some cues from one of the icons in Final Fantasy 16 the Phoenix if Square Enix just wants to make a new version of Final Fantasy that's all action and spectacle I say that's fine but you need to let the old Final Fantasy die so that a new one can rise anew\n"