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

[Astylla]

Well I finished all the side quests and still had something missing from the memory wall in Clive’s room so I looked it up and I have to complete all the chronolith trials and I’d been avoiding them all saying nah fuck that, but I can’t leave the one empty space so looks like I’m gonna be forcing myself to do that before I finish

Yeah I didn't even discover the trials until super late while finishing the last side quests. Even though I explore the shit out of things .
So yeah still missing that and im.bitter about it lol.

Sent from my SM-S908U using Tapatalk

[Obsidian]

I don't think the Trial obelisks even turn on until you get to Ash.

[Kaslo]

I don't think the Trial obelisks even turn on until you get to Ash.

No they do before that, I think it's after the 5 year time skip, then after you get that eikon.

[Vaspinne]

I think the only one that gave me trouble was Garuda cause the Garuda abilities are pretty meh when it comes to dealing damage. And the cooldowns paired with the slow kills paired with the lack of being able to build up time bonuses, I ended up clearing it on my first try but with literally a fraction of a second left. I remember the final boss for the trial, right at the end I was just zerging it for as much damage as I could as I was down to like 15 seconds left lol

I also did all the trials right near the end before the final boss, so I was like level 47 or 48 with the Gotterdammerung and whatnot, so I'm sure that helped

[NynJa]

I think the only one that gave me trouble was Garuda

Same
That was the only one that I actually had to focus on maxing TE's. Doesnt help that Aerial Blast will overkill enemies and they wont die until the ability is finished, which can waste a LOOOOOOOOT of time.

[Celeras]

Garuda gives you like 8(12?) seconds bonus time just for swinging 4 times in a row after pulling an enemy towards you with deadly embrace. Can literally farm infinite time lol, it's the easiest one.

[Anoat]

Well I finally finished! A very fun game. Not sure if I will play it again anytime soon, but that’s more about me than the game. Just so much stuff coming out in the next few months and not enough time to do them all.

The game was incredibly cinematic and filled with spectacle. The Eikon fights lived up to the hype and in some cases far, far exceeded them. The Titan and Bahamut fights in particular felt like mini-movies. I think Titan and Bahamut took 20-30 minutes from start to finish and they were juuuuuuust approaching my threshold for being overstaying their welcome.

On the whole, yes, combat was easy but that was always by design according to the devs so I’m fine with it. Having played God of War Ragnarok and Elden Ring in the last year I couldn’t help but compare them, although I really shouldn’t since it’s not fair. FFXVI was intentionally made to be casual friendly and more spectacle than anything else and it really shines in that respect. Reading some of the comments earlier about elemental magic & resistances, I think that would have been a fun addition to spice things up but not sure how they could implement it. The first thing that sprang to mind though was how God of War had enemies that could only be damaged by the axe, or chains, or spear and how maybe XVI could do that with spells. They were pretty close with enemies casting Protect, but that was few and far between and I don’t think any of the bosses had it.

For FFXIV players I’m sure you felt the influence from Yoshi P and Koji Fox from the localization to side quest design to enemy types and location names. I dug it.

Ending talk

Spoiler: show

I’m fine with the ending. From how very much Game of Thrones inspired this game clearly was, I wasn’t expecting a happy ending for all the characters. Doing the sidequests at the end felt like a proper conclusions for the major characters so I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed closure with any of them as the credits rolled. I’m going with the theory that Clive survived and went on to write the book under a pseudonym. How did we live? idk but he is literally the Phoenix now and they get reborn all the time. Hell it felt like Joshua died like half a dozen times and he kept coming back.

The hunts were fun distractions and I wanted more and more varied enemies! Like most of you, the only one that gave me trouble was Svarog but that mostly was because he was level 50 and I think I was 30-35 when I unlocked him. But I enjoyed the challenge with that level difference. It felt very Elden Ring-like in that you could really only take 2 hits or you dead. I kinda wish we got some kind of reward for clearing all the hunts other than a PlayStation trophy but eh it’s fine.

As far as future DLC, it’s a a forgone conclusion there will be a FFXIV collaboration so I’m down for that. I suspect more hunts and gear will be added. As far as story beats go, I’d really like to know what happened with Leviathan. Maybe they’ll show what happened during some of the time skips. I think Yoshi P said he wanted to do a DLC with the adventures of young Cid? That’d be kinda cool.

For all the “controversy” this game got about not including black characters…well. The plight of the Bearers is pretty heavy stuff as it is. Add in the racism and slavery with colored characters and I think you are just looking for an even bigger controversy from some people. I will predict now that once the PC version is available there will be someone who makes a mod that replaces every Bearer in the game with a colored character. I’ve just been on the internet long enough to expect that kind of shit, lol

And now the most important ranking. Who is best girl?!

Tarja >>>>>> Mid > Margret > Jill > Isabella > Benedikta > Charon (for Salodin)

Honestly I would have ranked Jill higher but whatever the fuck she was wearing that made awful sounds really, really distracted me and took me out of the game. It sounded like how your CD or DVD player is about to die and had me thinking this game was killing my PS5.

Overall I’m going 8/10 on the game as whole but 10/10 on spectacle alone. Good shit.

[Anoat]

Did they ever explain what the deal was with characters covering their mouth while they spoke? I remember early on Edwin and Clive and Joshua doing it so I thought maybe it was a Rosarian thing? But then nobody else ever did it. Were they just extremely paranoid about lip readers or something?

[NynJa]

Yes
Edwin wanted a world better for bearers, but no one else took kindly to it cause they were their slaves.

[Odesseiron]

Honestly I would have ranked Jill higher but whatever the fuck she was wearing that made awful sounds really, really distracted me and took me out of the game. It sounded like how your CD or DVD player is about to die and had me thinking this game was killing my PS5.

**CLINK CLINK**

[Mertron]

you left jote and the medicine girl (no not like that) out of your best girl rankings

[NynJa]

Tarja is the medicine girl?

[NynJa]

Unless you meant the medicine girl that helps Dion...in which case I'm gonna need you to take a seat right over here.

[Mertron]

i felt bad for the medicine girl all game and hope she got adopted into a nice family

Spoiler: show

and didn’t die when the city collapsed

[Anoat]

Jote is def Joshua’s bae so she is off limits, bros before hoes

Medicine girl is like ten sooooo

[Vagrant]

i felt bad for the medicine girl all game and hope she got adopted into a nice family

Spoiler: show

and didn’t die when the city collapsed

Spoiler: show

There is one popular theory running around out there that medicine girl is the lost Leviathan dominant based on some meaning behind her name being closely related to water in some translations.

[Celeras]

Spoiler: show

There is one popular theory running around out there that medicine girl is the lost Leviathan dominant based on some meaning behind her name being closely related to water in some translations.

Spoiler: show

Was expecting something like that because she shows up in the state of the realm thing VERY early. Thought there was a twist coming for sure, she definitely didn't need her own entry just for that one "helped Dion" update.

[Anoat]

So now after finishing the game I’ve been watching some of the promotional launch videos that I was avoiding for spoilers. Watched an interview with the English voice cast and Koji Fox and they said the lines were voiced and motion captured in English first rather than Japanese and now it all makes sense why this felt so much more fluid and real than any other Japanese game in recent memory.

[BWYuko]

Breh they said they were doing that back in like 2021. You're really committed to avoiding spoilers.

Interested to hear folks' interpretation of how the game ended. What do y'all think actually happened?

Spoiler: show

Did Clive survive long enough to be discovered on the beach? Long enough to write "Final Fantasy" under the pseudonym of Joshua? etc.

It was really satisfying getting a complete game delivered on release day, but I loved what we got and now I'm craving more content. Leviathan was mentioned, Cid I's rise would be cool to explore, Gav as Cid III finishing Mid's airship and struggling to maintain a world without magic is sequel stuff, but ripe for exploration. It'd be fun to have a superboss, or hell, just something big to smack around at Lv100 with Ultima Weapon.

Sad to put this one down, but so satisfying to have another great entry in the series finally. Now back to finish the rest of Zelda. I was nowhere near done when FF16 released.

[brozy]

My take on the ending is:

Spoiler: show

There was a line at one point along the lines of "The Pheonix's power can't bring people back" Can't remember what it was in relation to but it felt a bit chekov's guny (And honestly i feel like its something CB3 would do), so we're at the end and we've got Clive with basicially the power of a God albit its unstable or w/e so i feel like whatever he done to Joshua revived him at the expense of his own life cause other wise what purpose did that scene serve? and on the beach was his final moments, Joshua survived to write the book.

Like over all its not a complicated or convoluted story so i kinda don't feel like the ending needs to be either.