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

[Koul]

A part of me wants to do Bahamut again and get hit be Zettaflare lol wonder if it's an insta-KO move

edit: nvm, just watched on youtube. you literally can't lose lol

[Vaspinne]

Can we talk about how elemental weaknesses/resistances could have been really well utilized for this game and (like many things) got the ff14 treatment instead? Would have been a good opportunity to give the player more reasons to switch around their Eikon setups and mess around.

That and the overly simplistic gear/accessory system are definitely 2 FF14 team influences I thought were big missed opportunities. I get that Yoshi-P's mentality is making games that are pretty casual player friendly. But even something like, getting new better gear in newer higher level areas is something that's been done in every FF game that isn't an MMO, where as with 16 it was just like 'finish story point' -> 'go home and upgrade'.

Could have made each weapon have more unique traits or bonuses too, but they're all just straight attack/stagger increases. But again, that sort of stat simplicity is yet another 14 team/Yoshi-P style choice

[Bweigelt]

I'm actually really glad they didn't go the elemental weakness/resistance way. Keep that shit outta action games it just doesn't feel good. Like sure in theory it sounds fun with swapping eikons around to deal with resistances but do you really want to have to open the menu and swap out every lightning ability you have when you see or Coeurl or every fire ability when you see a bomb. That's sounds terrible to me.

[Vaspinne]

I hard disagree. Sure, if they make it something every single mob has resistances and you have to hard swap eikons or your damage is completely nullified or etc, yeah that would be fucking awful. But with how this game was made with dungeon runs and whatnot, they could have easily added something in to add some more depth.

Even something that didn't do resistances but say like, attacking with the proper elemental weakness drained the stagger bar and did more damage during stagger to enemies, and conversely, if you got hit with an attack that targeted the elemental weakness of your current equipped eikon, it did more damage or etc, stuff like that. And like I mentioned, with how the game has very deliberate dungeon runs, it could be specifically things that are included during those runs and not have such a strong focus during the open world segments. Give you a reason to do some prep going in to those dungeons, or shit you figure out along the way and adjust as you go and approach the final boss if the element was ambiguous (which in this games case, they most certainly were not lol)

[Vaspinne]

I mean, I agree in that if it was a super nit-picky kind of overly micro-managing, constantly having to stop the flow of gameplay sort of thing, it's be god awful. But with how they designed this game with dungeons, it definitely could have been implemented in an intuitive way

[Bweigelt]

I think anything pushing you to play a particular way in this game is just a bad idea, like just let people play what's fun instead of what's most effective at dealing with whatever particular dungeon or boss. And like how would that even work, the eikons are so spaced out that you wouldn't have weaknesses covered for like 80% of the game.

[Vaspinne]

Sure if they just forced it into the game as it currently is, it wouldn't work. I'm not saying that they should have forced it into this game as it ended up being. I'm saying with a game that has a focus on the player harnessing the power of elemental eikons, those elements being completely irrelevant is a missed opportunity. And aside from FF14 and 16, every other FF game has included it in some capacity.

In a game that has 7 eikons with 4 abilities each, and only lets you use 3 eikons and 2 abilities each at a time, I just figure it would have been an opportunity to intuitively use the skill sets you get in a more varied way

[Tyrath]

Just finished. Updating my list

Bahamut >> Final fight > Titan > Odin > Prologue fight > Typhon > Ifrit > Garuda

That ending got me feeling all kinds of way though

Spoiler: show

That flashback of Clive and Joshua, especially with baby joshua was so mean

I'm gonna subscribe to the Clive lives and writes the book as Joshua's name because he made the terrible/awesome Final Fantasy joke

[Salodin]

Elemental weaknesses is one of the very very few strategic choices you actually gotta make in a final fantasy game and they took it away. Without that, or debuffs, this game is simple AF. If it wasn't for excellent animations and particle effects the combat would be kinda dull imo. Just too easy to faceroll thru anything that isn't a boss.

Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk

[Tyrath]

They definitely made the game too easy. Will have to see how Final Fantasy mode is. My other complaint is wish we could have more than 2 abilities at a time per Eikon.

[Vaspinne]

Especially when you use 1 of those 2 ability slots for the 'astral flow' big ability that's on a long ass cooldown

[Tyrath]

Yeah when I started unlocking those is when I really started feeling the issues with the 2 abilities. If they had made the ultimates a different slot, that would've been good enough

[Bweigelt]

Elemental weaknesses is one of the very very few strategic choices you actually gotta make in a final fantasy game and they took it away. Without that, or debuffs, this game is simple AF. If it wasn't for excellent animations and particle effects the combat would be kinda dull imo. Just too easy to faceroll thru anything that isn't a boss.

Sent from my Pixel 7 using Tapatalk

Elemental weaknesses aren't a strategic choice though, it's as black and white as you can get. Either something is weak or strong against an element, there's no decision making to be had. There is plenty of depth in the combat system the game just isn't hard enough to need to use it. Honestly that's my one hope for the game is that with the PC release or a patch they add an actual hard difficulty. The tools are there to make a hard game they just aren't implemented. I don't think a game needs to be hard to be enjoyable but it would certainly broaden the appeal if it had a proper hard mode.

[arus2001]

My take is defeating Eikons would unlock specific base attack abilities, while what Eikons you have would you allow you to apply an element to it once mastered with the graphics changing respectively. Once you find a combo you like, you can stick to it, but you may want to change around for a particular encounter. Absorbs and total immunity should not be a thing, though.

Gear issue is more complex, but in the end, still lame what we got. I can get the whole "Not everyone's an RPG veteran!" approach, but this isn't how you ease them in, either.

[IceSylph]

They definitely made the game too easy. Will have to see how Final Fantasy mode is. My other complaint is wish we could have more than 2 abilities at a time per Eikon.

FF mode is unfortunately brain dead also.

[Celeras]

The difficulty/depth to the RPG systems is the only gripe I'd have besides the ending. Or should I say lack thereof... because at best it's really not much more than a "choose your loadout". Gear/etc is very weak.

And I didn't get a Game Over until

Spoiler: show

Behemoth in the campaign, and only because I got him to zero HP early in a stagger and sat there for 20+ seconds waiting for him to get up and cast Extinction. Expected a cinematic that never came and got 100-0'd when I didn't move lol

, and was pretty flabbergasted when the checkpoint put me directly into the same fight with the boss at half HP and all my consumables restored. It's not like anyone looks to Final Fantasy to get their difficulty on, but if you're going to make this kind of game AND make it extremely easy AND strip out all the RPG elements... you're probably going to turn off some folks with that kind of handholding. I said nope and loaded the last autosave before the boss fight anyway, because fuck you lol.

Personally I'm used to just playing through these games for the story (albeit while leaning on the now missing RPG elements), so it didn't really impact my enjoyment. Unlike the ending.

[Tyrath]

The only game over I got in the entire game was fairly early on when I was out of potions, had like 15% health left and decided I had to try to kill an aevis before I went to town lol

[Obsidian]

The problem with elemental weaknesses/resistances in a game like this is that your Eikon abilities don't have standard functionality across all Eikons. It's a bad design choice to force someone into using Ice on King Bomb when Shiva's abilities aren't suited to the fight or what the player is trying to do. It works fine in more standard turn-based RPGs because the elemental spells are usually just copy pasted with different colours, but in an action game like this it just doesn't work well because it's too restrictive to a player's loadout.

I think my only complaint with the Eikons is that all of them aside from Phoenix (and I don't have Odin yet but I expect it's similar) really lack aerial mobility. I've spent probably 90% of my non-boss combat time just staying on Phoenix because Phoenix Shift is the only way to get to enemies in the air.

[Vaspinne]

Use Garuda's O ability and pull them into you? Or snipe them with Ramuh's O ability or Thunderstorm? Bahamut's Impulse is really good too, or could use Satellite and snipe them with magic. Or Shiva's Mesmerize can pull them all into you too.

But again, I mentioned elemental weakness/resistance as a missed opportunity for something they could have incorporated from the start and built the game with it in mind, and don't think it'd be really viable in the current XVI

Edit: Also as a sidenote, I think Shiva's abilities would actually be super useful against Bomb King lol. The Cold Snap precision dodge permafrost effect would be super handy for BK and the adds, Mesmerize for the adds too, and Ice Age and Diamond Dust for damage of course. Don't sleep on Cold Snap precision dodges

Edit2: The more I think about it, the more it kinda dawns on me that I can't really think of a fight where a certain eikon would be difficult to use against a certain boss. And I dunno if that's because the eikon abilities are all designed well enough or if... the game is just that easy =X. Maybe like, using Odin on Savrog? Since Odin is such an up close style attacker and I found Savrog a lot easier to deal with by keeping my distance

[Uzor]

I love Shiva, I use her permanently. I’ve found myself using Shiva, Odin and a third depending on situation. Her O ability is super useful, can freeze any enemy including bosses when timed correctly. Don’t even have to use the rest of her abilities if you don’t like them, just slot another ability in.