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

[chazzyphizzle]

i love upgraded gigaflare. level 4 megaflare is also pretty disgusting

[Tyrath]

Lvl 4 takes so long to charge though. Feel like I'm just dodging around for 5 mins

[Salodin]

That's why I like Zan better, similar trigger but at least it charges easier off abilities and you can still attack, combo, and trigger bullet time. Also the damage is direct and often lethal, whereas megaflare is just indiscriminate aoe which looks cool but is eh imo.

Gigaflare I like for 1.5x damage during stagger, plus it triggers bullet time which is nice when squeezing in damage during staggers. I also found I need one to two abilities with longer cooldowns because honestly I can't burn through them quick enough otherwise. The tornado rocks as a second ult, and honestly I get two free staggers between the tornado and pulling them down with O during the half stagger; the tornado still rips em during the animation so by the time it's done they're basically staggered again.

Impulse is like my megaflare, and the cooldown is very short which is nice. I like being able to squeeze in a Gigaflare + Zan with 3 seconds left on stagger lol. This is where I thought Rift would be useful, but they let you chain abilities so fast that I never needed to bother.

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[Drai]

don’t sleep on Sattelite, mastered and on FF mode it helped with like 99% of the staggering, it also hits single enemies so fast during stagger that hitting the 1.5 damage multiplier is a joke and wastes less hits of your big damaging attacks

[Obsidian]

Diamond Dust is also busted, both for staggering and for capping out the stagger multiplier in one shot.

[Anoat]

ALRIGHT BOYS I JUST STARTED so I prob won’t be reading anything here just posting that I finished the morbol fight and I realize my biggest obstacle is going to be retraining my brain after playing god of war and Elden Ring about what attack and dodge buttons are mapped to, yes I know I can manually remap them but ehhhhh I’ll take the challenge

[Tyrath]

ALRIGHT BOYS I JUST STARTED so I prob won’t be reading anything here just posting that I finished the morbol fight and I realize my biggest obstacle is going to be retraining my brain after playing god of war and Elden Ring about what attack and dodge buttons are mapped to, yes I know I can manually remap them but ehhhhh I’ll take the challenge

You don't manually remap them.

There's now 6 button configurations. Some of them use R1 and R2 for attack and magic

[Salodin]

ALRIGHT BOYS I JUST STARTED so I prob won’t be reading anything here just posting that I finished the morbol fight and I realize my biggest obstacle is going to be retraining my brain after playing god of war and Elden Ring about what attack and dodge buttons are mapped to, yes I know I can manually remap them but ehhhhh I’ll take the challenge

Pfft you could have done this already if you downloaded the demo

Bum rush the story until you hit your first quest with a + icon. After that, play how you want but that first + quest will help out a lot in the beginning. I'd skip all quests until you do that one

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[Astylla]

Just finished the game..and I just have no words. Loved every moment.
So much to say..so many emotions playing through. Easily second favorite Final Fantasy I've ever played.

My top 3 are now :

1. FF4
2. FF16
3. FF6

Never thought any game would top 6 for me though. Take your time in the game, seriously so much to take in.

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[Astylla]

Just beat it.

Spoiler: show

UGH. After doing every side mission available. And those final scenes. Fuck my life I was gutted. I was really hoping Clive would take the power of Ultima, redistribute some to Joshua and then the rest of the world, and then happily ever after. But I knew that's what really wasn't going to happen. Just wishful thinking.

Exactly how I felt just now.

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[SephYuyX]

Finished it last night. Rating it as 'meh'.

The story is a great FF story; really enjoyed every moment of it and its related aspects.

Unfortunately, everything else subtracts from that, namely the battle system and its systems (or lack of).

Really disappointed because I wanted to like it a lot more and keep playing, but there's just no reason to do anything extra outside of the main story. Battles aren't fun or strategic, huge lack of any sort of real RPG element, any side questing is pointless, and NG+ FF mode is just annoying since all it does is increase mob bulk to an obnoxious amount.

[Anoat]

Well I had my first death during the

Spoiler: show

Benedikta

fight but I am blaming that because I spent all my potions on these fucking ninja dudes you had to fight before you get there. But the game lets you respawn with full potions so that made it easy to clear. I was expecting some Elden Ring “woops you used your potions too bad” so that was a relief.

[Tyrath]

Just finished the game..and I just have no words. Loved every moment.
So much to say..so many emotions playing through. Easily second favorite Final Fantasy I've ever played.

Finished it last night. Rating it as 'meh'.

Duality of man.



I am not done yet but definitely with Astylla here

[SephYuyX]

Depends on what Astylla has to say about anything else other than the story. We're on the same page otherwise.

[Drai]

I personally liked that battle system up to a point, some of the abilities felt good at first and then flat out tapered off into useless territory in NG+, and some abilities, while good, were just way too cumbersome to use at all.

also small spoiler

Spoiler: show

Leviathan the Lost was clearly a thing, and yet Clive as a vessel is perfect without its powers? gtfo of here with that bullshit lol

But yes I agree the story was extremely good and I was satisfied at the end of it, the battle system was fun for me personally, I just wish the game had harder content aside from the Ultimania mode stuff.

[arus2001]

Combat system ability selection is inevitably a victim of the limited ability slots and there only being one character to control. Players may vary in what "feels good" to them, but when you start slapping enough builds in a document, you're going to start seeing trends on what's good and isn't. Such is meta life, really.

If I could wave a magic wand to weave in some more RPG elements without complaints of being "too hard" for first-timers, I'd increase the number of equipment slots, introduce more unique affixes for said gear, bring in elemental affinities and resistances (without immunities and absorbs), stat monsters accordingly, add breakable parts to foes that serve as extra drops when targeted and potentially change their combat behavior when broken, crafting built around this, and some good hot swap options to make shifting between builds for a particular task a breeze.

Right now, all the game really accomplishes for making things more difficult is giving mobs more HP and making them hit harder. It's basically bottom of the barrel dev 101 when you don't really take the time to implement other character enriching systems. And much as I hate the whole "MaKe It MoRe SoUlSlIkE!!!11" that's plaguing gaming as a whole, they've at least got a bit more going than XVI when it comes to builds. I do think XVI otherwise proves you don't have to make combat bust your balls hard for people to enjoy it, though.

[Vaspinne]

I personally liked that battle system up to a point, some of the abilities felt good at first and then flat out tapered off into useless territory in NG+, and some abilities, while good, were just way too cumbersome to use at all.

also small spoiler

Spoiler: show

Leviathan the Lost was clearly a thing, and yet Clive as a vessel is perfect without its powers? gtfo of here with that bullshit lol

But yes I agree the story was extremely good and I was satisfied at the end of it, the battle system was fun for me personally, I just wish the game had harder content aside from the Ultimania mode stuff.

Regarding your spoiler

Spoiler: show

It's almost like they're saving Leviathan for DLC

[IceSylph]

Regarding your spoiler

Spoiler: show

It's almost like they're saving Leviathan for DLC

My head canon is that

Spoiler: show

there can only be 8 Eikons active at a time, and since there have been 2 Eikon of Fire for the past 33 years, Leviathan can't show up.

Dumb, but wouldn't surprise me if that's the case.

[Uzor]

The way I'm looking at it

Spoiler: show

That did bother me too.

It's possible that during the fall of the Mothercrystal at Dzemekys, Leviathan was either defeated and his bloodline killed off so that no Motes of Water no longer exists, or they left the continent. Simply destroying the Mothercrystal would not prevent him from getting reborn as the Northern Mothercrystal was destroyed and Shiva still exists. An Eikon can not be reborn while the Eikon is still alive, which means Leviathan is either out there alive, or his entire bloodline was killed off.

Odin is another Eikon that was "lost" for a long time. If I understood it correctly, Barnabas is the first Odin Eikon in basically forever, and he came from the continent beyond. So like Odin, Leviathan could still be alive out there somewhere.

The only issue with that is that supposedly all the other continents have been destroyed by the Blight, so I'm not exactly sure where Barnabas originates from or if I misunderstood the whole "continent beyond" origin of Barnabas.

Regardless, that does not explain why Ultima was fine with Clive absorbing everyone but Leviathan to become the perfect vessel. Another alternative could be that Leviathan was a failed Eikon and was thus destroyed. Or maybe due to Leviathan not existing, Ultima was fine settling with Clive absorbing the other Leviathans hoping that would be enough for his plans.

Regardless, Leviathan DOES seem like a potential DLC, together with the closed door and the fenced-off territories on the map that are currently not reachable.

As for potential DLC

Spoiler: show

I'm not quite sure how that would play out if Clive were to be the main character. The end heavily hinted at magic disappearing from the world, which would drastically change the battle system if we play as Clive during it.

I could see a potential DLC playing out in the past instead, where we play as the Dominant of Leviathan during the was of Dzemekys.

I'm not sure if any DLC will be made though. Any DLC that could be released (such as the story behind Dzemekys and/or Leviathan the Lost) could potentially be its own standalone game instead.

[Salodin]

Spoiler: show

I took it as only a dominant that has absorbed so many eikons and ascended can channel the spell that Ultima was casting. He needed a higher power level lol.

I figured they called Leviathan "the Lost" cause the eikon disappeared leading us to assume the dominant probably is alive somewhere otherwise someone else would have been discovered as dominant by now. I also figured the mainlands were crystal and blight free, or at least used magic in a different way. I don't recall any character expanding much on what civilization looked like on the mainlands aside from the coastlines.

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