Final Fantasy XVI (PC/PS5) - June 22, 2023

[Salodin]

Idk man, everyone except a handful of dominants are totally throwaways and uninteresting. Every new area I go to is me talking with the local boring leader, hearing why I gotta go beat up someone, gives me a seal so I can walk around town to do the beatings, rinse repeat.

The combat and cutscenes direction is doing heavy lifting in this game. Everything else is pretty mid. I'm about to head to Twin Sides now, but yeah this game is fun but so far I can see myself playing it once, and maybe trying it on PC for ray tracing, but that's about it. All the in-between stuff is just bland and dare I say...boring.

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[Gokulo]

Most of the leader and other NPCs get fleshed out in late game side quests. Not ideal though for sure

[Salodin]

A tale of two games man...one minute I'm like this fucking sucks and now I'm like "I am a Shield of Rosaria, and I will do my duty!"

Such highs and lows, I wonder why they added so much boring padding to this game. It really doesn't need it.

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[Vaspinne]

If you think about this game as FFXIV offline, a lot of the game design makes sense in the "ohhh this is the same development team huh?" sense.

From the side quests to the "dungeons" of trash mobs, mini boss, trash mobs, mini boss, final boss, to the heavy and dark themes but also the random prostitute NPCs lol

Don't get me wrong, absolutely enjoying this game so far. But like I mentioned before, that FFXIV fingerprint is all over this game

[Obsidian]

I mean, a lot of the male NPCs are even just hi-res versions of FF14 males, down to the hairstyles and facial presets.

[Vaspinne]

The main hub you always go back to, the big Eikon fights, the somewhat awkward non-cutscene NPC dialogues with the preprogrammed emotes, the sidequests going from lame fetch quests to begin to really dark and heavy stuff towards the end

Outside of the DMC battle design, the game really is FFXIV offline lol. Again, not that I personally mind

[Bweigelt]

A tale of two games man...one minute I'm like this fucking sucks and now I'm like "I am a Shield of Rosaria, and I will do my duty!"

Such highs and lows, I wonder why they added so much boring padding to this game. It really doesn't need it.

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It's cause it's not padding, pretty much every side character that gets main story time gets a big payoff later in the game through the sidequests which are absolutely worth doing. It might seem like padding but it allows a cooldown time because the main story beats are so heavy and like I said it is all building to something.

[Vaspinne]

The characters with the all over the place dialects, the desert city being capitalism based, the bright red star in the sky lol

[Salodin]

Yeah, I can see FFXIV all over this thing.

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[Malithar]

A tale of two games man...one minute I'm like this fucking sucks and now I'm like "I am a Shield of Rosaria, and I will do my duty!"

Such highs and lows, I wonder why they added so much boring padding to this game. It really doesn't need it.

Been dodging spoilers as I play through (about to get Eikon #4 I think), but I feel this way, except kind of in reverse. The padding that is there is pretty bland, but it's the padding that isn't there that bugs me. When you're about to go some place new, they talk about how difficult the journey is, or how they have to sneak in, etc, then you get a black screen and you're there already. I feel like those moments woulda been prime to pad the relationships you have with your allies or better show the world building that is going on.

Spoiler: show

I don't know if there's more time jumps, but the two so far have annoyed me. So Torgal was just living life out and about for 13 years til he suddenly found Cid and led him right to Clive? 5 years after the fall of Drake's Head and Northreach still has a haphazard Agrabah out-front it's gates? They accomplished jack all in those 5 years except for the new hideaway? I dunno, the time jumps just didn't really land for me. I wanted to see what happened during them. Maybe it gets expanded upon later in the game.

[chazzyphizzle]

yeah there has been some pretty egregious yada yada'ing of a lot of stuff, thank god the dialogue is well written and performed cuz the plot is all over the place lol. also annabella/whatever moms name is truly just sucks, just a bad character, and not in the good way

[Vaspinne]

The active time lore button is a godsend. Such a simple tool that's so useful. Any cutscene that has people or places you don't remember, hit the big controller button, pause the cutscene and get access to information about who or where is being talked about

Made following this at times convoluted plot so much easier

[Obsidian]

The characters with the all over the place dialects, the desert city being capitalism based, the bright red star in the sky lol

I 100% expected the big red star to be named Dalamud.

I'm not very far in yet (still only just have 2 Eikons) but the Active Lore thing is indeed very useful. I've had to check like five different times the difference between Branded and Bearer, because in my brain obviously a Bearer could be someone who BEARS a brand.

[Vaspinne]

Yeah it took me a bit to figure out they're the same thing, one is just the slave version

[Tyrath]

Ok some of you fuckers don't appreciate a good old anime fight and it shows.

Those titan fights were amazing.

[Lucavi]

You can absolutely tell that Yoshi P considers Yasumi Matsuno his best friend. This was Tactics Ogre X Final Fantasy X Devil May Cry.

The more Matsuno, the better.

[Bweigelt]

You can absolutely tell that Yoshi P considers Yasumi Matsuno his best friend. This was Tactics Ogre X Final Fantasy X Devil May Cry.

The more Matsuno, the better.

Preach my brother. They just need to give every new FF to Matsuno disciples.

[Lucavi]

Preach my brother. They just need to give every new FF to Matsuno disciples.

If I could upvote, I would. The man's had the formula down pat since '94. Its no wonder that the actual Japanese dev who got the fuck out and looked at real world political strife and wartorn countries would know how to consistently write about the horrors of war instead of simply recycling El Generico "12-year-old middle-school protag-kun saves the world" plots.

The weakness I would give Matsuno is that he, like the rest in the genre, always feel a need to have a "battle against a super God/Demon" at the end of it all, but you've gotta have the game part in there, I suppose.

[Andalusian girls]

Matsuno and his meticulously crafted multifaceted real-world-inspired civil conflict narratives devolving into but what if DEMONS in the final act name a better combo

[Drai]

welp got my Platinum, not sure if there's any post game FF mode content or not, will see when the credits roll I suppose lol