Final Fantasy 16 (PS5)

[Svencouver]

FF14 is super excellent and well worth the time. Probably my favorite FF game alongside Tactics

 

[JaegerDice]

Extremely pleased with the primary creatives’ choices for best/favorite Final Fantasy. Outside of FF3 (which I thought was merely fine) and a lack of FF9, it excites me to think they’re potentially inspired by drawing on the best of the franchise. The FF5 love in particular brings a tear to the eye.

 

[Shareefruck]

This verbalized my reservations better than I could. It's really good, doesn't have glaring flaws, and seems to be a return to form (and I seem to have liked some of the smaller details more than they did), but I wouldn't say has shown anything mind-blowing or super interesting/deep yet (which is reasonable for the first two hours), nor is the script quite Matsuno-level-great so far (which admittedly isn't a fair expectation either).



Probably the most outwardly striking/memorable thing about it is how

Spoiler

intense/explicit they went with the deaths for a Final Fantasy game

, but that's pretty surface level stuff, IMO.

 

[Mikeaveli]

Finished the demo a few days ago and I thought it was pretty good. The cutscenes are a bit excessive but they are very well executed and the graphics are pretty impressive. The combat is basically Devil May Cry at home. It's good but it does start slow when you don't have many abilities and it's clearly a step below a game like DMC5. Unfortunately performance mode has some massive frame drops outside of combat and during the eikon battles which really detracts from the cinematic feel of the game. SE has announced a day one patch but the drops are so severe that I doubt they will be completely fixed at launch.



Overall I enjoyed it a lot more than the other cinematic PS5 games I've tried out but I did cancel my pre order (which was going to be delivered after day one anyways) just in case the day one patch doesn't do much to fix the performance as I would rather just wait until it's fixed or the PC version is out.

 

[Shareefruck]

^ Seems more like a case of articles editorializing overly optimistic misinformation than Square actually stating that outright.

 

[TheDoldrums]

If it's really only a 300MB Day 0 patch than it's still like, the most polished AAA game on release I can remember in awhile lol

My only reservation is that it might be TOO much like Game of Thrones to the point where I'll constantly be thinking of it. I really like the tone and inspiration, but rewatching the "Ambition" trailer you can really draw a lot of pretty straight comparisons. Obviously our guys are the Starks/Winterfell, Sanbreque is Kings Landing/Lannisters, Dhalmek is Martells/Dorne, there seems to be something similar to greyscale afflcting people, a wolf as our companion, etc. Like the inspiration but I'm hoping they don't wear it obviously on their sleeves all game.

But it's been a loooong time since I've been looking forward to a game this much.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

If it's really only a 300MB Day 0 patch than it's still like, the most polished AAA game on release I can remember in awhile lol

My only reservation is that it might be TOO much like Game of Thrones to the point where I'll constantly be thinking of it. I really like the tone and inspiration, but rewatching the "Ambition" trailer you can really draw a lot of pretty straight comparisons. Obviously our guys are the Starks/Winterfell, Sanbreque is Kings Landing/Lannisters, Dhalmek is Martells/Dorne, there seems to be something similar to greyscale afflcting people, a wolf as our companion, etc. Like the inspiration but I'm hoping they don't wear it obviously on their sleeves all game.

But it's been a loooong time since I've been looking forward to a game this much.

The more i'm thinking about GoT while playing the better for me! Easily my favorite series of all time. So pumped for this game, 4 days to go!

 

[TheDoldrums]

1 week ago: I'm doing a media blackout so I can be as surprised as possible when the game drops

today: let me spend my fathers day watching the 5 hour pre-launch celebration stream

 

[Mikeaveli]

^ Seems more like a case of articles editorializing overly optimistic misinformation than Square actually stating that outright.

They made a pretty explicit statement announcing the update and apologizing because they previously said there wouldn't be one:

I don't even think its a bad thing that there will be a day 1 patch after all, I am just highly skeptical that the games frame rate dropping from 60 to the mid 30s (outside PS5's VRR window) during key cinematic scenes will be fixed in time for launch

 

[Shareefruck]

Ehh, I don't care to defend Square Enix in general either, but I think there's quite a difference between saying "We didn't want to do one/we didn't have any planned at the time" and claiming that "We won't need to do one."

It's the journalist who writes the headlines that morphed it into some sort "confidently calling their shot" (and now coming up short) thing.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Watch out for spoilers!

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Apparently pre-orders have been skyrocketing since the demo was released. No real surprise there.

Reviews should be coming out by Wednesday. Not that I really care what it scores, but hoping it's over a 85.

 

[Tw1ster]

Managed to hold off from the demo as I was preoccupied with DQXI, but I’m happy to say I’ve gotten to the credits (won’t be hitting post game quite yet) just in time for FFXVI. Beyond excited for this

 

[aleshemsky83]

They made a pretty explicit statement announcing the update and apologizing because they previously said there wouldn't be one:

I don't even think its a bad thing that there will be a day 1 patch after all, I am just highly skeptical that the games frame rate dropping from 60 to the mid 30s (outside PS5's VRR window) during key cinematic scenes will be fixed in time for launch

Tbh I intend on playing this game in 30 fps mode. Although the 30 fps mode was dropping to like single digits in the ifrit-phoenix fight. I’ll have to try it again to replicate it but I’m pretty sure you’re not gonna get locked framerates with this bad boy

 

[Jovavic]

Weighs in at 90gb

 

[hotcabbagesoup]

Weighs in at 90gb

Man, I kinda miss working in the hard drive industry. 90gb used to be ridiculous 6 years ago but now it's like nothing.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Here comes the reviews! Looking good, 9/10 from IGN. Famitsu gave it a 39/40.

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

Some of the negative points in the reviews are a bit concerning from my point of view.

Weak exploration, boring side quests and essentially no looting system. Massive glowing praise for the combat and the eikon battles. Story seems to be a mixed bag - strong overall but has its flaws.

My takeaway is that this is a really good, potentially great, Final Fantasy, but won’t compete with other major titles from this year or previous years. Fine with that, but maybe I had hyped myself up too much.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Some of the negative points in the reviews are very concerning from my point of view.

Weak exploration, boring side quests and essentially no looting system. Massive glowing praise for the combat and the eikon battles. Story seems to be a mixed bag - strong overall but has its flaws.

My takeaway is that this is a really good, potentially great, Final Fantasy, but won’t compete with other major titles from this year or previous years.

I’m not getting “weak exploration” at all. It’s not a open world game thank god. So yes there are linear sections which i’d much rather prefer. 15 was so bare and boring. Side quests are always the same in every game, this game the side quests apparently get better and close up loose ends and smaller characters in the second half of the game, not sure how there could be a complaint with that.

Only a few are complaining about the story, most said it’s great. Regardless i cant understand how you can already takeaway it wont compete with other games without actually playing it, especially with the top ratings it’s getting so far. As of now, it’s the highest rated FF game since FFX, 20 years.

 

[Mikeaveli]

As I predicted the patch did nothing for the performance mode, looks like I'll be waiting to play this one

 

[JimmyApples]

Sitting at 88, probably goes down to 87 by Thursday. Pretty strong performance but not sure GOTY contender.

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Lol, at the 60 from Eurogamer, the quote alone makes it laughable, guess we know why they gave it a low score:

" I find the deletion of people of colour from these spaces more sinister than the racial stereotypes of older Final Fantasies, particularly in a game that wants to talk about overcoming structural injustice and bringing people together. That "togetherness" is worth fighting for, but it's characterised here by what it excludes."

Apparently they also told people to boycott the game because it was not diverse enough

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Score of a 90 on OpenCritic. They don't weight certain reviews like MetaCritic does. 4th highest rated game of the year.

Final Fantasy XVI Reviews

Final Fantasy XVI is rated 'Mighty' after being reviewed by 173 critics, with an overall average score of 88. It's ranked in the top 2% of games and recommended by 92% of critics.

opencritic.com

 

[Tw1ster]

I’m not overly influenced by review scores as long as they’re not indicating the game is a complete disaster. It’s very cool to see such a high aggregated score for a new mainline Final Fantasy game though. I don’t think anyone was expecting perfection and of course the change in tone and gameplay will divide fans but an 88 average is awesome to see regardless. Other than Eurogamer’s trash review which clearly had an agenda, it seems to be universally agreed upon that this is a return to form in terms of quality for the Final Fantasy series.

 

[ColonialsHockey10]

Lol, at the 60 from Eurogamer, the quote alone makes it laughable, guess we know why they gave it a low score:

" I find the deletion of people of colour from these spaces more sinister than the racial stereotypes of older Final Fantasies, particularly in a game that wants to talk about overcoming structural injustice and bringing people together. That "togetherness" is worth fighting for, but it's characterised here by what it excludes."

Apparently they also told people to boycott the game because it was not diverse enough

We can split hairs on side quests, exploration, etc, but I think we can both agree how ridiculous this is.

What a joke. It’s a f***ing fictional world.