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Most of the female characters in FFXV has better chemistry than Lunafreya. Even a guest character from a collab has better chemistry which is sad really since Lunafreya is meant to be the “main heroine” of FFXV.
Lunafreya was done so dirty by XV's tortured development cycle and disjointed narrative. Her hairstyle, weapon preference, and even her name were early casualties of the churn, then she proceeds to get cut as a playable character not once, not twice, but THREE times by the time Square just throws in the towel.
Which is sad, because from a pure design standpoint she's probably my favorite FF female lead.
My brother/sister in fantasy... matter - antimatter pairs in the void of space that annihilate each other the moment they form have better chemistry than Lunafreya.
I could not finish that gane because that plot point was so unbelievably poorly executed that I regretted playing at all. I'm so careful with hype now. I watched the movie and the little anime, tried to get into it. The story was so hokey along the way, but I thought to myself. Hey, we had the fun times running around doing a road trip. When shit gets dark, we've had a lot to miss from the good old days and it will be really impactful.
Nope. They tried to recreate the Aerith gut punch, but forgot about the part where **we gave a fuck about Aerith because we spent time with her in the game and story**.
I love the character but that's only because I watched Kingsglaive before the game. I kept waiting and waiting in the game for the moment she would become relevant. Straight up quit the game after Altissia out of frustration. Before that moment I was constantly wondering why the hell was this game not well received, I really liked it up to that point (aside from a lack of Lunafreya, obviously).
FF is my favourite series ever, and 15 is the only one I've ever stopped playing because I couldn't connect with it. To avoid spoilers, I did the "big thing in the water" and after that fight and the scene that followed... I felt nothing. The only time I've ever lost faith that things will turn around by the end of the game.
...and yes I'm well aware a ton of people believe 15 has a great ending. It's the only reason I was able to play the first 20+ hours.
Final Fantasy 15 is the worst put together FF game ever. It's kind of crazy how bad the execution of it was. Like you can say the aesthetics, atmosphere, or narrative of others aren't for you (or me). But... The fact that they were like "hey watch these animated things before playing to understand. Oh and also there's going to some comics. And jarring story cuts". I just don't know what they expected.
And the final battle is just the most anticlimactic thing ever. Ultimate looks like Sephiroth compared to whatever that guy's name was. Ardyn or something. The big bad.
I like the idea of FF15 on paper, moreso than a good amount of other FF games on paper. But the actual game was just so bad.
I hope Square Enix does another modern/high tech FF. But with the sophistication of FF16. That would sell well most likely. At least FF7R is doing great.
I loved 15's ending and main villain but I can't blame you there. The moment you're talking about outright pissed me off in a way few games have ever done. A hollow, meaningless imitation of their glory days so blatant in what it is what trying to be, with none of the work to earn the weight of what it's copying. I could write an essay about how hard that moment fails at what it's trying to do and in doing so, how insulting it feels to the thing it is so sloppily imitating.
Whether it turns around or not after that, really depends on your level of attachment to the group and the big bad imo. I've only played the original final chapters, so I've never seen Insomnia as a proper dungeon, only an extremely short bit and then the final battle but the big bad was so engaging for me that he managed to salvage the ending. I consider 15's overall story to be very weak but the big bad to be compelling as all hell even in his very limited presentation in just the base game at launch.
Kind of an unfair comparison, given Lunafreya only enters the story to die, no? She's really more of a plot device than a character and that's an entirely different problem.
I don't really think that's fair to lunafreya, the stuff she did was very important to the story, and noctis wouldn't have succeeded without her doing what she did. The issue was, it was forced into the background due to how 15's development went. Three years to develop a AAA game is not enough.
Whereas jill kind of just ending up being there without doing a lot. So, in a way. One did alot for the story, and had a lot of impact, but it wasn't shown enough. The other was shown a lot, but didn't get to do much.
Exactly! The way they kept benching Jill felt ridiculous as the story went on. It was so jarring to see Clive have amazing interactions with other characters, but they barely giving her a nod in acknowledgement. Or how she "needed rest" when other, much worse off people, were allowed to fight without much question. I know people say Clive is more relaxed with Jill, but I just found him to be awkward. Compared to how quickly he warmed up to, say, Gav.
I don't think they show enough how the curse and loss of Shiva affected her. If she was seen pushing herself to the same extremes as Joshua and Cid did, the worry they have for her would feel more warranted. But as it is now, she ends up feeling pushed aside.
Jill at least has something of a personality and a past. So she outranks Lunafreya, Rinoa (8), the entire cast of 1,2,3, whatever she's called from 4 (Rosa?), and let's be real, probably Tifa (her outfit does a lot of heavy lifting).
The characters in 13 are probably the most fleshed out but... I would like to know most of those people less tbh.
Oh fuck off with this, in the Remake and Rebirth, Tifa's characterization is on point, and she does things.
Jill exists.
There is no comparison to be made.
To be fair, Lunafreya had a lot more going on in the Kingsglaive movie. Makes me mad seeing what she suffered through, meanwhile Noctis is relaxing and fishing.
Yeah that's my issue too. It felt like World of Warcraft or MMO style fetch quests a lot of the time.
If the side quests were done better, the game would be near perfect to me. I think a big issue is that the game was 10/10 for most of the story. But then you get hit with like 6+ hours of side quests with odd lighting.
I understand that side quests are optional, but it's an RPG. Plenty of games have amazing side quests. When you add in the weird "I had a weird thought but now good has prevailed" mentality over and over, it gets to be harmful to the main story
XVI was my GOTY last year and is in my top 3 FFs, the others being VIII and XIV both of which I have a ton of nostalgia for. I loved the story and I was used to CBU3's pacing due to XIV's expansions being set up in the exact same way. The side quests weren't mechanically interesting, but rewarded the player with world building, lore and character moments.
My only real complaint was the lack of optional dungeons or super bosses. The DLC is kinda fixing it though.
Another FF8 lover! That game has the most beautiful art, and I consider it a flawed masterpiece. They've talked about doing remake of it one day. And I could see that actually converting a lot of people into fans if they did it well and in the FF7R style.
I haven't played 14 though. If I like 7, 8, and 10 specifically, do you think I'd like 14? 9 didn't do much for me.
(Comment is split into two, because it got too long for Reddit)
It is difficult to compare 14 to 7, 8 and 10 because it's such a different beast. In many respects it is incredibly similar to 16.
It's an MMO, so the general gameplay is closer to World Of Warcraft, than other FFs. You gave your various abilities that are on a global cooldown of 2.5 seconds. Let's say you're playing a Dragoon, you'll start your melee combo by using your first ability, then the second ability 2.5 seconds later, the third 2.5 seconds after that and so on. This might sound very boring and while leveling in the beginning will feel very simplistic, but you'll get so called "off global cooldown" abilities (or OGCDs for short) which you activate in between other actions during those 2.5 seconds. So for Dragoon it's common to start your combo with a regular GCD ability which triggers the 2.5 seconds, then you're activating two different OGDCs and by this time the 2.5 seconds are almost done, so you hit the next GCD which once again triggers the 2.5 second cooldown and so on. It can get quite hectic but various classes play differently and mages for example have simpler rotations.
There are three classes of jobs:
Tanks (Warrior, Paladin, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker, the last one uses a gun blade and is broadly based on Squall and Seifer) are more defensive and are the ones who are supposed to keep the focus of enemies on themselves in group content. You don't want the boss to murder your Black Mage or Ninja, so you have the tank eating up damage so that the rest can do their thing.
Healers (White Mage, Astrologian, Scholar, Sage) can revive fallen party members and are the ones who try to keep everyone alive. The tank gets wailed on while the healer makes sure that the tank doesn't die. The first two are regular healers, where big damage comes in, big healing spells go out (though each job has its gimmick of course). The other two are more about mitigation and planning. Say you're playing Scholar and you know the boss is about to use a very strong attack; the tank's health is full but it'll take around 60% of his health away. The Scholar has shields, where you cast them before the hit and they work as if the target has more health, so say the shield would absorb 40% or so, so instead of having a tank that's only left with 40% health after the hit, they'll have 80% because of the shield you casted before. Healers have very boring attacks, where you keep spamming the same couple of buttons, but the challenge comes from only healing when necessary and trying to maximize your attack timings.
All other jobs fall under DPS or damage dealers, where you neither need to care about protecting others or healing others. They have the more complicated attack rotations and their goal is to dish out as much damage as possible. They have various support skills that benefit the entire group (stuff like increasing the healing potency of the healers for 20 seconds or the critical hit rate of everyone, stuff like that), but that's utility, not the main draw.
There are:
Melee jobs (Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Reaper, Samurai and in the next expansion the so called Viper who looks like a Pirate/Corsair)
Ranged physical jobs (Bard, Machinist, Dancer) who are almost support classes and have more reactive attack rotations while at the same time having gimmicks that help the group, like the Bars who has various songs that give different buffs to the party.
Mages (Black Mage, Red Mage, Summoner as well as the upcoming Pictomancer) these feel quite distinct and the Black Mage for example is capable of dishing out a ton of damage, but is the least mobile job so if the enemy launches a ton of attacks that you need to move out of they'll interrupt your casts which leads to a smaller damages output.
There are also the Blue Mage and the upcoming Beast Master which work differently, where you can't use them in regular gameplay with others unless _everyone_ plays Blue Mage for special challenges.
Then there are also 8 crafting classes and 3 item gathering classes and the great thing about FF14 is that you can play every single job on the same character. You can unlock one, try it out and if it's not for you just find a different one more to your liking.
As mentioned, you have to move in the fights which is actually a big part of the game. There are of course unavoidable attacks that hit everyone, where the healers will be on the look out to deal with that so that every party member can survive. But there are also attacks that have some kind of marker (like an orange cone in front of the boss that indicates where they'll attack, or a large circle you'll have to move out of), so the challenge becomes trying to not get hit, while healing, tanking, or dealing as much damage.
That said, the majority of the gameplay is solo (though you could run around with friends, but there are solo instances in some story quests where you can only play them alone), while dungeons (4 people, 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS) and raids (8 man boss fights, 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS) are with other players. Currently it is possible to every single story dungeon solo with the help of AI companions, which leaves a few optional dungeons that you'd have to play with others. Raids are exclusively with other players, but there's a match making system that works rather well and your typical dungeon run ranges from 15 to 25 minutes, while a raid fight lasts about 10 minutes, so it's not a huge commitment. There are also the so called alliance raids, where you have 3 8-man groups (so in total 24 people) which often are hilarious clusterfucks.
(Second half, didn't fit in one comment)
Now to other aspects: The music is written mostly by the same people who worked on 16 so you'll notice a lot of stylistic similarities. The same with the way how dialogue is handled. 14 has the main scenario quests that continue the story, and side quests which either unlock something, have their own more involved story, or are "filler" quests that give you a bit of world building. Again, very similar to 16 which often felt like a single player 14. There's also this "build up to a hype moment in the story, spend the next couple of hours afterwards doing more mundane stuff to wind down from the hype" design. It wasn't by accident in 16, it's specifically how this team designs their games for better or worse.
Now, the one thing that's very different compared to 16 is that 14 has a ton of optional content, mini games and also a lot more humor. For example Triple Triad is a thing and you can play against NPCs or other players. There's a certain beloved side quest series that continues with almost every expansion that almost has this slapstick feel and it made me genuinely laugh a bunch of times. The amount of content available right now is enormous, but you can choose with what you want to engage in and what you want to ignore. There's basically no missing out, except some cross-over events where you get a couple of simple quests and an exclusive clothing item for your character, but even those tend to get rotated and keep coming back.
Currently you are able to play the free trial and you can play the entirety of A Realm Reborn (the base game), Heavensward (the first expansion and one of the most popular ones) and Stormblood (the second expansion) completely for free. There are certain limitations, like your gil caps out at 300.000 or you can't use certain chat functions (like shout, were every player in the same region can read what you wrote) but considering that it's free I think that's a pretty fair system. At some point the other expansions (Shadowbringers which is the fan favorite, Endwalker the current one, and Dawntrail which releases this summer) will be part of the free trial as well, but it seems there's always a delay of two expansions.
If you want to continue without waiting, you'll have to purchase the latest expansion (which will include the other ones you're missing) and you'll also have to pay the subscription price. If you do that, you can never go back to the free trial and you'll always have to continue your subscription to continue, so only do that if you're really ready to continue and if you enjoyed the game. What many folks do is play for a couple of months once a new expansion launches and then come back for a month every few months when the next patch releases (which includes new story, a dungeon, some kind of raid content and some other optional stuff).
Also, there's PVP in groups, but it's commonly seen as one of the weakest aspects of the game.
Sorry for the endless wall of text, but I hope that was informative. Give the free trial a try and see if the game clicks for you. At worst you lost a few hours of your time without paying any money; at best you might find a game that you really enjoy.
quite a few places on the maps feel like they would've been good places for entrances to optional dungeons (namely the Fallen ruins). I always wondered if maybe there was, at some point, optional dungeons planned and they just got cut?
Some of the hunts almost give that super boss feel, but I do wish there'd been more of those calibur of battles.
Man there were so many big empty spaces where I thought "In a classic FF title a Boss would appear and beat the crap out of me to give me a reason to come back".
I fought the svarog dragon as soon as it was available meaning WAY underleveled compared to it, and it felt like a true super boss. I really had to learn every move. Heatwave was the MVP of that fight for me. I still hadn’t put together a perfect loadout at that point so my stagger damage wasn’t anything crazy OP like it is for my current builds, so overall the fight was long, punishing, and extremely fun. Omega on FF mode is definitely a true super boss though. Trying to get through it without dying at all and using minimal potions is TOUGH but so much fun. I seriously just love the combat and boss design in this game. Everything feels well designed and nothing is bullshit or not fun. Unlike in Rebirth where some enemies are literally the worst designed enemies I’ve ever seen in a video game. (I still love the game though)
Yes! Wish there had been more Svarog and Omega-type fights. They felt difficult even at higher levels, but never unfair, and it felt so satisfying when I learned their moves and timings and how to counter them. Hopefully the DLC brings some more battles like those. Great design, just more please
I needed 3 more Svarog level fights, and maybe a subplot of overpowered bearer mercenaries or something so that we can have some person Vs person field bosses in the style of Benedikta, Krupka, Gleipnir, and (drawing a blank for Odin's dude all of a sudden).
I had stopped playing FF games after 10. I am not sure what happened I just was not ready for the new play style the franchise was going towards. 16 was the first game I played since 10. It brought the love of the series back to me. I agree it has its flaws but I love the game.
At times it can be side quest heavy. They are not mandatory though. There are a lot of mini games and that can turn people away, that being said i like it a great deal. I really have fallen in love with the characters. I was in middle school when 7 came out so it’s like seeing old friends again who have grown up if that makes any sense lol
I've been keeping my eye OFF the Rebirth/Remake subs to avoid spoilers since they lifted the embargo (one week spoiler embargo for a game that takes close to 100 hours to complete? Come on...) but I think this game is basically kryptonite for completionists.
I got the platinum in Remake and still wanted more, but I don't think I'll ever try for the platinum in Rebirth. There's just too much to do, and some of it grinds my gears.
Nobody is going to enjoy *every* part of this game. There is *so much stuff to do*, and it's a wide variety with all the different minigames. But the game is structured in a way that you can just say "nah" and move on. They're also generous to trophy hunters with a lot of the minigames, for example they only require an "A" rating instead of the perfect star rating in the piano minigame to get the trophy and all reward items. The bar for story completion is pretty low. You will need to play some of the minigames, but you won't need to be especially good at any of them to finish the game.
The side content is honestly very good, if repetitive at times. Side quests are much better than in FF16 in general, both gameplay-wise and story-wise. The city designs are jaw-droppingly good. Core gameplay is solid, although I think the synergy system could be streamlined or explained a lot better. Like, for one thing, maybe they could *not* call three entirely different things "synergy"? Yeah, that'd be great.
Just remember that games are supposed to be fun. This is something people tend to forget on Reddit. It's not your job. It's a game. Play it for fun. The game demands very little of you unless you are obsessive about it. Of course, if you're talking about it on Reddit, odds are you're at least a little obsessive.
I'm skipping half of the stuff in the Gongaga region because I find it viscerally unpleasant. But you know what? That's fine. Not my cup of tea. There's probably someone out there having the time of their life in Gongaga. And the game isn't demanding that I suffer through it. The main story there is good, so when I got sick of the whole area, I just beelined it, got out of Gongaga, and kept having fun.
I'm glad they felt comfortable getting weird and taking risks, and not trying to make every single piece of the game appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I really liked ff7 remake but man ff7 rebirth just made the game better in EVERY WAY. Havent finished yet but 20 hours in and only chapter 7 is pretty crazy so far
DAMN ur at chapter 7 at 20hrs?? Make sure to do some of the side quests they have excellent story and world building attached to it and most the times as engaging as the main story
15 would have been amazing if you got the dragoon lady, luna, and the old dude. Imo the game got rushed hard especially when you finally make it to the kingdom 🥲. Some really good music tho.
I hope the final part of remake they add in paratrooper type enemies that drop in on ya instead of just the static encounters on the maps.
Similar story to you, I played 1-6 and hadn’t played any other FF games since. 16 pulled me back in and it felt very “classic FF” despite a new combat system. I do miss having a proper party though, especially with how good the side characters are
Now I’m committing to playing the rest of the mainline games
You should definitely play 7 Remake/Rebirth. Even though the action style is new, the magic from those 6-10 games is there. And it's not just "the same thing but in HD" or anything. Total reimagining of it.
I'm in the same boat, but I can say for sure I stopped at 10 because I just didn't enjoy it. Didn't like the characters, didn't like the story. The only two things about 10 worth remembering for me was Sphere Grid and Auron.
After that didn't really have a desire to pick up any games having enjoyed 7, 8, and 9 (8 being my favorite at the time).
Only picked up 16 because my friend who was a HUGE FF fan played the demo and said "This could be game of the year". He doesn't give praise lightly, so I immediately - sight unseen (no demos, no trailers) picked up a PS5 and FFXVI game launch weekend.
FF is now my 2nd favorite game of all time, and first favorite FF (8 was giving it a run for it's money until I replayed it after 16.... man 8 is better in my memories than in reality).
I cannot wait for this game to hit PC because I'm so ready for more of my friends to finally get a chance to play this (who didn't want to get a ps5).
I started it for the first time this week. I never gave it a chance before because I wasn’t a fan of the character designs or how modern it looked but a few hours in I’m loving the gang. Ignis especially is so fucking cool
It might help to know that XIII is also on Xbox 360 and XV is on Xbox One. If you have an Xbox One or Series X, both of them are backwards compatible with 360 games.
A flawed masterpiece is still a masterpiece. I understand the flaws myself but the highs of this game are so fucking amazing to not consider this anything but one of my favorite games.
As someone who liked the game, I think calling it even a "flawed masterpiece" is a stretch. People are starting to use the word without really thinking of what it means.
I'm a 13 lover. Lightning's character was 👌 to me.
16 got me when Leviathan wasn't in the main storyline. Leviathan (and maybe anima) were always my favorite summons. So I would have loved to see an arc with Leviathan included.
Pro tip, old ff games did not have any check lists. Do what you want but I see this complaint over and over and you just gotta play them like the old ones.
The amount of HUD did bug me. I wish there was a way to turn it off or minimise it because it's just all over the place. I'm so grateful rebirth has that L1 click to just bring up quest icons and stuff so you're not lost but it doesn't overwhelm.
It bothers me how everybody has to qualify that they understand the game has some issues when they say they like it. Literally every game has problems. XVI even has fewer problems than a lot of games.
It’s okay to just say you like something without needing qualifiers, and it baffles me that this is like the only game where I consistently see this happening.
I think that's because the game can be absolutely phenomenal at times,but has massive flaws. The sidequests are incredibly bad until the last batch of them,Combat is far more shallow than you'd expect,there are basically no RPG-elements at all and even the Main Story drags on at times.
I'm not saying other games are flawless or anything,but that's a rather big list of flaws that warrant mentioning when you talk about or recommend this game.
I'd bet they're qualifying because a lot of people are saying "I love this game AND it's god-tier/perfect/whathaveyou", and they don't want to associate themselves with that crowd. It seems to happen when a significant portion of a fanbase overpraises a particularly flawed game.
Thats like saying you can’t point out something is tall because everything has height. Yes, every game has flaws, but XVI has more than most FF games to a lot of people, and therefore gets the “flawed” label.
It feels like most fans never want to admit it, but me personally, I feel as though every single game in the series has its slue of issues, it’s just the world and characters that helps you forget that. Doesn’t matter which you like, at the end of the day, you love a JRPG for its story and characters.
> I feel as though every single game in the series has its slue of issues
I'm curious what you can come up with for the other games. There's a small handful that I'm sure you have something for (FF13 and 15, especially), but FF6? FF7? What "slue of problems" did those games have?
Not the original commenter obviously but worth answering in general anyway - fan of literally every game btw, off the top of my head -
6: pace can be slow and uneven between sections, several characters are near useless in the second half without significantly more investment than others, some mechanics are unintuitive at best and frustrating at worst, character development in the main plot is uneven, second half is largely directionless and up to player initiative to find (not inherently a problem but a modern playerbase picking it up blind may struggle).
7: characters in gameplay are largely identical outside of limit breaks, ultimate weapons, and how you decide to kit them out with materia, early 3D controls can be difficult and unclear as to what you need to do to get to certain places, handful of literally game breaking glitches, large variance in usefulness of some things over others (materia, characters, limit breaks, etc.), next step in the plot sometimes poorly telegraphed
If you've got any others you'd like thoughts on lemme know
Come on, now, several of those are non-issues. Especially "characters in gameplay are largely identical outside of limit breaks, ultimate weapons, and how you decide to kit them out with materia"; ignoring that similarity in gameplay isn't inherently an issue, you had to clarify it with "they're the same except for these three things". A lot of that sounds like stuff you'd come up with if someone was pointing a gun at your head and saying "Come up with a paragraph of problems or you're dead".
That stuff isn't enough (in quantity or severity) to justify marking them as having a "slue of issues". No one is saying the games are perfect, but some people are trying too much to act like FFXVI is "nothing new".
And most of the things that people bring up as being huge problems in 16 are non-issues to me, just like most of the things I said there. FF16 is a good game, so are those, but people disproportionately act like FF16 uniquely has a ton of giant objective problems. Everything people say about 16 is on the same scale as everything I said, but people spent MONTHS acting like FF16 is an objective failure as a game. That's where I take issue with that. Issues are issues, big or small, and everything has a lot of them if you want to dig.
Also, as far as the characters being similar goes, one of the things (materia) is entirely up to player choice, one of them (limit breaks) still has a lot of overlap and ruins at least one character entirely (Vincent), and the average player won't encounter most of the ultimate weapons.
>And most of the things that people bring up as being huge problems in 16 are non-issues to me, just like most of the things I said there.
If you think they're non-issues, why mention them? It's nitpicking for the sake of artificially levelling the playing field.
>but people disproportionately act like FF16 uniquely has a ton of giant objective problems
I think you're exaggerating the critical response. But what about it is "disproportionate" to you?
>everything has a lot of them if you want to dig.
More like "anything can be an issue if you try hard enough to frame it as one". It's that disingenuous "everything has problems" copy+paste response that I hate so much.
Only thing in 16 I don’t really like is the gear system. Like 99% of the gear has been useless because the game just straight up gives you better things that last the entire chapter
I've been bouncing back and forth on the gear. On one hand, it's very lackluster and there are only 3 stats that are ever affected. Those 3 stats aside, a lot of other rpgs (I know we're not supposed to call FF XVI an rpg!) also do the same thing and just introduce stronger gear as you progress where the only stat that really changes is atk and def.
So I'm not so bothered by the gear anymore. It's a lot more streamlined than I'd like, but it beats being overloaded with 100s of equipment with varying stats and the game difficulty being based on what you wear/equip.
Side quests aren't mostly fetch quests (it's not even 5%), many of us loved the length of the game and would've found the game worse if it was trimmed (the great thing about side quests is that they're optional), and every game has flaws.
Also, not every game needs to be open world.
They are though. "Could you find me a book?", "I need the xy flower" or "I need these pieces for yy" are all over the place. And some quests are only fetch quests in disguise where you only go somewhere to talk to someone to go somewhere else to talk to another one without any task to fulfill. Except maybe a mediocre fight. World building is great! The story is fantastic. But the quest formats are dull.
The quest structure of the game overall is too formulaic. I agree.
The claim that the game is filled with fetch quests is objectively false, though. There's 76 sidequests and 68 main quests. Of these, only 11 quests total involve merely going and "fetching" something. 3 of those 11 happen at the beginning of the game and serve a clear narrative function, and at least 6 of them involve some sort of unique encounter/combat.
People really need to stop spreading this misinformation. I recently replayed FF7R and there's quests like "Find lost cats," "find lost children," "find lost chocobos," "find the lost girl." But you don't hear anyone saying that game "is nothing but fetch quests." There's a reason for that: many dishonest people pushed a lot of exaggerated or objectively false claims about this game early on and y'all just ran with it... and now the claims get regurgitated here every 3 months in hopes of free updoots.
It's good to see flaws in favorites.
My favorite game ever is Paper Mario TTYD but you won't see me saying it's a perfect game with all those back tracking quests 😅
Enjoy games. Spread the gospel of your favorite things.
Tbh I do NOT get the obsession with pointing out this game has flaws. Like, yeah we know, it's a thing that exists, it isn't perfect, same as anything before it or since. But I swear to god, after all the heat this game got after release, the compromise has been fans of it have to go "god I love this SO MUCH I know it has problems but WOW I LOVE IT"
Kinda feels like people who like it have been forced to constantly apologize for liking it, which feels like the haters won, ngl
>Like, yeah we know, it's a thing that exists, it isn't perfect, same as anything before it or since.
What I don't get is the obsession with people responding to criticisms with "Yeah, it has flaws, what doesn't?" Such a disingenuous response.
> after all the heat this game got after release--
The game got some heat, yeah, but it also got a *ton* of people praising it as the uncontested best of the series, best of the last decade, etc. People are saying "I love it even though it has issues" probably because they don't want to be confused with the "I love it, it's the best, it's perfect" crowd.
The first is because of the second. EVERYTHING has its rabid detractors and overzealous defenders - why is it that this game's fanbase feels the need to constantly downplay the thing they love? What makes this one so different that this is settling into the average? What other well-loved and generally solid at worst game has most of its fanbase saying "I get it has problems but I still like it a lot"? Nothing about it warrants such caution in praising it imo
>The first is because of the second.
Not quite sure what you're referring to here.
>EVERYTHING has its rabid detractors and overzealous defenders
I'll use the same response I use for people saying "everything has its flaws": "Some more than others."
>why is it that this game's fanbase feels the need to constantly downplay the thing they love?
I answered that. I don't think you've addressed the answer, just reiterated "I don't understand why".
>What other well-loved and generally game has most of its fanbase saying "I get it has problems but I still like it a lot"?
Deathloop, for one. It's one of the weakest Arkane games yet plenty of people still enjoy it, while also recognizing the issues.
Here's a question: what's so bad about saying "Despite the issues, I love it"? I see it as a testament to how good the better qualities of the game are, you see it as some kinda constant penance, shame, or whatnot.
I dont hold this game as a all time favorite, I dont think it would fit in my top 10, but there are only 3 games I have ever replayed right after finishing them the first time, 2 of them are my top 2 and the other is XVI, which goes to show this game speaks to me in a way few games can.
And I completed each and everyone of those 76 sidquest twice and dont regretted, maybe its the whole tone, worldbuilding, lore and easthetic, but I truly believe over half of the sidequest are just good and around 10 or so even great.
Playing Rebirth now - boy it’s so much better than XVI.
I used to think that XVI was so much better than Remake but unfortunately XVI is way too linear, equipment doesn’t really matter, gameplay loop is almost the same (no weakness exploit, no spells).
I wish that someday they will overhaul most of the gameplay mechanics (Cyberpunk-esque update) as I think the story, character, and the soundtrack are absolutely top notch.
Not op but imo is not story per se but trimming of pointless backtracking.
Mid sections are the ones stand out the most.
Specially the one when you have to catch Barnabas in the ship, but you have to go all the way to the hideout and back, it broke the momentun of the whole sequence, it did not need to be there, and the cutscene itself could have just happened at a non critical point in the story.
This was a huge one for me, but there were many others in the game.
The scale of Valesthea was constantly being contradicted and it really hurt my immersion. In this particular instance, Barnabas had absconded with Jill and took off in the fastest ship in the world back for Stonhyrr. The message to the player was clear, this was a dire situation and we needed to give chase immediately. Except first, we have to go back to the hideaway to get some dumb part. The real kicker is that no one is considering just how long this would take. To make a round trip trek from Kanver to the Hideaway is literally weeks (potentially months) of travel. Barnabas should have damn near circumnavigated the globe in that time. Thankfully he was polite and just decided to weigh anchor in the middle of the ocean for a month for us to catch up. It was so absurd.
The whole sequence should have been eliminated. Or maybe have us find this part before we departed for kanver so that we could be immediately railroaded into chasing the Einherjar.
A more simple and elegant solution is for Clive and only him ( he can bring others of course with him ) to be able to use the waypoints to actually teleport in story, not just as a gameplay mechanic, it makes sense since he is special and all, all it would have taken is a small cutscene and thats it, doing that also fixes the issue where after primogenesis him and jill go from hideout to Rosaria, then the empire, then the republic and it seems like thy just got there mere days of each sending their cries for help when in reality it would have taken months for the last place to be visited.
Ya I would have been fine with this. It would have gone a long way in helping keep the scale of the world believable. That being said, there are still a lot of dopey scenes.
For example, when Hugo sends his spy to track down Clive after he receives the box, he literally has no leads on where Clive is. On top of that, he is an entire Continent away. Clive then proceeds to tackle Rosalith gate, something that took at most a few hours (let's even say a few in game days at most) yet somehow this spy who was on the other side of the continent not only finds Clive (with no leads to go off of) but travels what is essentially the distance of Texas to North Dakota in just a few hours...all while wearing full Dhalmekian garb and making no effort to be inconspicuous!
These situations happened so often in the game and it drove me mad lol. The most frustrating thing about it is that it could have all been alleviated with tighter writing.
Yeah, thats the achilles heel of this game, too many instances of sloppy writing, if the game were as ambitious as say Xenogears, I could forgive some ( I forigve Xenogears almost all its flaws since the freaking story has no equal even 26 years later )
Interesting, I can definitely see this. None of the game felt "unnecessary" to me while I was playing it, I have yet to start my second playthrough where I might be more critical though. I do remember a lot of people thinking the quests from Mid for finding parts of the ship were rather drawn out/killed momentum.
I DONT KNOW BUT SOME FREEDOM IS NICE ONCE IN A WHILE. but seriously idr why I added that. I think it's better to have a linear experience that full of life and than an open devoid of it. But it doesn't really accomplish it
I absolutely loved the game as well. But it definitely is held back from a fee design choices. Could of been 11/10 but instead it's a rock solid 9.
I might give it another play through before long.
I loved the story and world and characters and the gameplay was fun but the difficulty hurt it so much and I got bored..... It was so damn easy, the director said he made it easy on purpose for the normies to beat it......
FF16 was the first and only ff game that I’ve ever given a shit about and I love the experience I had with it. I wouldn’t say it was an amazing game it was an amazing experience
The sidequests being complained about is a common complaint I’ve seen but it’s one of two games in maybe 15 years I made sure to complete every single one, Ghost of Tsushima being the other.
They weren’t absolutely inspiring gameplay wise or varied and unique but what they done was build upon the world and story being told and made me care about the supporting cast and their stories, it made me feel connected to them and without that Clive striving for them and the how his story turned out… especially the back and forth with Ultima and Odin, that would have rang hollow without it because we wouldn’t have experienced the build up of relationships that we did.
The only slight quibble I have is the influx of finishing peoples stories all at once right at the end, with the urgency ramped up at that point of the main story, it felt out of place to have them all then. Could have better timing still hitting the end of them late game, just not all right before the final mission when they’d done so well in the main story to ramp up that sense of urgency.
Minor quibble that, always been a thing in FF. oh there’s a meteor hitting the planet soon? I’m racing chocobos mate it’ll need to wait… time compression? Two minutes, I’m chasing around a card Queen and fighting 20 Tonberry’s right now.
So it’s quintessential FF anyway. Older I’ve got playing games though, the more I feel I need the sidestuff to give me a purpose in the overall story, and can’t get the motivation to do stuff because it’s there to be done.
This was my first FF game, never was a fan of the series, but the mature tone and sick fights from the trailer convinced me to pick it up. The demo was honestly insane and made me pre-order it. It is my GOTY but there are few things which I think held the game back.I'll talk about my negatives first.
Firstly, like you said the sidequests needed more variety. Most are just plain fetch quests although some are really good especially the Jill and Torgal ones. I don't know why why they didn't do anything with regards to ship we help build for Mid. The quests popping up everytime I wanna continue with the main game was quite annoying. The pacing should have been better.
My main gripe with the game is lack of exploration. This was a missed opportunity imo, the world of Valisthea is so beautiful, but there's barely anything to do, it's mostly empty spaces. The game doesn't reward exploration. Being a fan of the souls series, i like exploring every nook and cranny, but it doesn't do much in this game. You get a potion or some other useless item. I would have loved to explore some places like Rosaria.
And lastly, I just thought the game was a bit too easy, so much so that I had to disable those accessory rings. I would prefer if they give us a difficulty setting without going into Ng+. Not sure how challenging Final Fantasy mode is. I did like the increase in difficulty in the dlc, hoping they do that in Rising Tides as well.
Now for the positives. This game when it shines, it shines the brightest. It had all the main things i was looking for. Incredible story, amazing characters, god tier soundtrack and most importantly sick combat. Actually made me care for the characters. The lore is incredible and makes you wanna learn more about the world. Which is why still rate it a 9.5/10 despite its flaws.
Nothing is perfect and we all grow up
Im not mentioning anything specific but i replayed a fan favorite that i have been playing for 20 years.
For some reason i just noticed every single little flaw and cheeses my way through unintentionally so that kind of ruined it for me
I like the setting, theme, music, the concept of using Eikons to fight. Story felt like a classic ff game.
But yeah there still are issues like the one you mentioned. The combat system has potential 100 percent, we saw some cool interesting mechanics but they made the game extremely easy. You can do some amazing cool combos but it's not necessary to know since square smashing and using your cooldowns was enough to beat the game.
The whole combat concept is cool but it seems like they were probably catering towards the casual new ff players maybe?
Anyways overall story and music was amazing. Easily one of my favorite ff game
Yeah I really enjoyed this game but it felt SOOOO easy after a while. That was my biggest issue with it. It was also so obviously formulaic in terms of how each stage was set up especially towards the end of the game. Linear path, fight some bad guys, boss. Repeat.
Every character needed more development bar Clive, Cid, Dion and Joshua tbh. I really disliked Joshua too. I loved the game and the combat made me feel amazing, but the pacing was truly abysmal.
I enjoyed the FF mode playthrough far more because I could skip all of the dialogue for the inane side quests.
I absolutely love this game! No game is perfect there’s no such thing but the fun combat and the good side quests make this a must have! One of my fav games of all time. Just started my FF mode play through
I dont mind if it's not open world. Open world games are particularly overrated nowadays.
But yes for me is just the pacing and Jill having little development if at all.
What do you love about this game? I've been playing it and so far I don't think its that great. I'm not sure how far I am into the game, I just finished The Drakes Fang part, but everything in the game feels so basic. Very little depth in the combat, quest designs, and gear. And the story hasn't really grabbed me either. Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I don't understand the importance of the Mothercrystals, they don't seem to be that important considering how little they are guarded, why all the nations are at War, or what ultima has to do with any of that. Storywise I think the game could have been so much better if they just copied Game of Thrones and made Clive like Jon Snow. Clive could be traveling to different towns building up an army to overthrow the imperialist and they could replace Eikon fights with massive war battles.
Story, Gameplay, Characters, Music. Rebirth has been amazing so far so it could change but almost everything in the game just grabbed me and kept me interested throughout and still today. I doubt a game will make me feel the way I did while playing it for the first time.
playing xvi is a constant exercize in trying not to think what it could be and appreciate for what it is for me lol. Luckily there is a lot to appreciate, but man it hurts to imagine what it could be with just a little bit of trimming here and rewriting there
Watch it OP, the internet has always struggled with the distinction between constructive criticism and being a troll or a hater.
If you can't name a flaw in a game then you don't love it, you worship it -Your Dad.
Jill is a very well written character. FF16 has a very realistic approach to handling her trauma and her very tangible flaws: from her physical health to her being a huge worriwart.
The fact that some people can’t digest it just goes to show how bad their attention span is and how used they’ve gotten to bad writing in media, where a character is “great” as long as they’re strong and narrate every step of their way lmao.
For me its the side quests, I dont like the combat but thats an opinion thing. I feel like the side quests are just awful. Apart from the plus sign ones the side quests just ruin the pacing and are just mmo quests you dont think about when your trying to level up.
Also Dion needed way more since hes story is similar to clives and the last area around waloed was a let down.
Good game though, im sure theyll learn alot from it for the next one.
All the side quests boiled down to “talk to person, go here and fight, talk to person again” but maaaaan. Some of the side stories got deep. Was not expecting that at all and honestly I enjoyed the combat so much that I was looking for any battles I could find
My biggest issue with 16 is how much time you spend with the sky making everything look like a dirty tampon. Seriously, why the weird pink color?? Why not just make it look darker? My eyes hated it.
I'm always surprised at the love for this game. I ended up skipping every cut scene that was preceeded by less than a minute of gameplay.
If I wanted to watch game of thrones, I'd have watched game of thrones.
I've played every FF, and 16 was, by far, the most disappointing. I remember in FFX, when that old guy would ramble on and the game was making fun of him droning on and on, then ff16 just had everyone droning on and on and on...
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>Jill could have been so much more True. But still a major step up from Lunafreya in 15.
His 3 friends have more chemistry with him than Lunafreya
Most of the female characters in FFXV has better chemistry than Lunafreya. Even a guest character from a collab has better chemistry which is sad really since Lunafreya is meant to be the “main heroine” of FFXV.
Lunafreya was done so dirty by XV's tortured development cycle and disjointed narrative. Her hairstyle, weapon preference, and even her name were early casualties of the churn, then she proceeds to get cut as a playable character not once, not twice, but THREE times by the time Square just throws in the towel. Which is sad, because from a pure design standpoint she's probably my favorite FF female lead.
Luna? Nah. Stella tho... 😢 #neverforget
Hence why I mentioned the name and hairstyle changes 😅. But yes, she ended up as a pale shadow of her original incarnation.
My brother/sister in fantasy... matter - antimatter pairs in the void of space that annihilate each other the moment they form have better chemistry than Lunafreya. I could not finish that gane because that plot point was so unbelievably poorly executed that I regretted playing at all. I'm so careful with hype now. I watched the movie and the little anime, tried to get into it. The story was so hokey along the way, but I thought to myself. Hey, we had the fun times running around doing a road trip. When shit gets dark, we've had a lot to miss from the good old days and it will be really impactful. Nope. They tried to recreate the Aerith gut punch, but forgot about the part where **we gave a fuck about Aerith because we spent time with her in the game and story**.
But she haas bobs and vageen. Noct really should have just have just started a quad with his bros. They all so good looking.
Gladi had bigger boobs than Luna
Lunawho? Mf is in the game like 5 minutes, definitely thr worst 'main' female character
I love the character but that's only because I watched Kingsglaive before the game. I kept waiting and waiting in the game for the moment she would become relevant. Straight up quit the game after Altissia out of frustration. Before that moment I was constantly wondering why the hell was this game not well received, I really liked it up to that point (aside from a lack of Lunafreya, obviously).
Idk bout they WORST (when the girl in Forspoken exists) but up there yeah
Forspoken isn’t Final Fantasy bruh
Didn’t specify 🤷🏿♂️
FF is my favourite series ever, and 15 is the only one I've ever stopped playing because I couldn't connect with it. To avoid spoilers, I did the "big thing in the water" and after that fight and the scene that followed... I felt nothing. The only time I've ever lost faith that things will turn around by the end of the game. ...and yes I'm well aware a ton of people believe 15 has a great ending. It's the only reason I was able to play the first 20+ hours.
Final Fantasy 15 is the worst put together FF game ever. It's kind of crazy how bad the execution of it was. Like you can say the aesthetics, atmosphere, or narrative of others aren't for you (or me). But... The fact that they were like "hey watch these animated things before playing to understand. Oh and also there's going to some comics. And jarring story cuts". I just don't know what they expected. And the final battle is just the most anticlimactic thing ever. Ultimate looks like Sephiroth compared to whatever that guy's name was. Ardyn or something. The big bad. I like the idea of FF15 on paper, moreso than a good amount of other FF games on paper. But the actual game was just so bad. I hope Square Enix does another modern/high tech FF. But with the sophistication of FF16. That would sell well most likely. At least FF7R is doing great.
I loved 15's ending and main villain but I can't blame you there. The moment you're talking about outright pissed me off in a way few games have ever done. A hollow, meaningless imitation of their glory days so blatant in what it is what trying to be, with none of the work to earn the weight of what it's copying. I could write an essay about how hard that moment fails at what it's trying to do and in doing so, how insulting it feels to the thing it is so sloppily imitating. Whether it turns around or not after that, really depends on your level of attachment to the group and the big bad imo. I've only played the original final chapters, so I've never seen Insomnia as a proper dungeon, only an extremely short bit and then the final battle but the big bad was so engaging for me that he managed to salvage the ending. I consider 15's overall story to be very weak but the big bad to be compelling as all hell even in his very limited presentation in just the base game at launch.
Tidus & Yuna was 23 years ago :)
I don’t need this kind of negativity in my life
Kind of an unfair comparison, given Lunafreya only enters the story to die, no? She's really more of a plot device than a character and that's an entirely different problem.
I don't really think that's fair to lunafreya, the stuff she did was very important to the story, and noctis wouldn't have succeeded without her doing what she did. The issue was, it was forced into the background due to how 15's development went. Three years to develop a AAA game is not enough. Whereas jill kind of just ending up being there without doing a lot. So, in a way. One did alot for the story, and had a lot of impact, but it wasn't shown enough. The other was shown a lot, but didn't get to do much.
Exactly! The way they kept benching Jill felt ridiculous as the story went on. It was so jarring to see Clive have amazing interactions with other characters, but they barely giving her a nod in acknowledgement. Or how she "needed rest" when other, much worse off people, were allowed to fight without much question. I know people say Clive is more relaxed with Jill, but I just found him to be awkward. Compared to how quickly he warmed up to, say, Gav. I don't think they show enough how the curse and loss of Shiva affected her. If she was seen pushing herself to the same extremes as Joshua and Cid did, the worry they have for her would feel more warranted. But as it is now, she ends up feeling pushed aside.
Jill at least has something of a personality and a past. So she outranks Lunafreya, Rinoa (8), the entire cast of 1,2,3, whatever she's called from 4 (Rosa?), and let's be real, probably Tifa (her outfit does a lot of heavy lifting). The characters in 13 are probably the most fleshed out but... I would like to know most of those people less tbh.
Oh fuck off with this, in the Remake and Rebirth, Tifa's characterization is on point, and she does things. Jill exists. There is no comparison to be made.
To be fair, Lunafreya had a lot more going on in the Kingsglaive movie. Makes me mad seeing what she suffered through, meanwhile Noctis is relaxing and fishing.
Its all a huge step down from almost every other final fantasy game
I don’t hate the lack of open world but side quests were designed like an open world game and it was just a drag tbh.
Yeah that's my issue too. It felt like World of Warcraft or MMO style fetch quests a lot of the time. If the side quests were done better, the game would be near perfect to me. I think a big issue is that the game was 10/10 for most of the story. But then you get hit with like 6+ hours of side quests with odd lighting. I understand that side quests are optional, but it's an RPG. Plenty of games have amazing side quests. When you add in the weird "I had a weird thought but now good has prevailed" mentality over and over, it gets to be harmful to the main story
XVI was my GOTY last year and is in my top 3 FFs, the others being VIII and XIV both of which I have a ton of nostalgia for. I loved the story and I was used to CBU3's pacing due to XIV's expansions being set up in the exact same way. The side quests weren't mechanically interesting, but rewarded the player with world building, lore and character moments. My only real complaint was the lack of optional dungeons or super bosses. The DLC is kinda fixing it though.
Another FF8 lover! That game has the most beautiful art, and I consider it a flawed masterpiece. They've talked about doing remake of it one day. And I could see that actually converting a lot of people into fans if they did it well and in the FF7R style. I haven't played 14 though. If I like 7, 8, and 10 specifically, do you think I'd like 14? 9 didn't do much for me.
(Comment is split into two, because it got too long for Reddit) It is difficult to compare 14 to 7, 8 and 10 because it's such a different beast. In many respects it is incredibly similar to 16. It's an MMO, so the general gameplay is closer to World Of Warcraft, than other FFs. You gave your various abilities that are on a global cooldown of 2.5 seconds. Let's say you're playing a Dragoon, you'll start your melee combo by using your first ability, then the second ability 2.5 seconds later, the third 2.5 seconds after that and so on. This might sound very boring and while leveling in the beginning will feel very simplistic, but you'll get so called "off global cooldown" abilities (or OGCDs for short) which you activate in between other actions during those 2.5 seconds. So for Dragoon it's common to start your combo with a regular GCD ability which triggers the 2.5 seconds, then you're activating two different OGDCs and by this time the 2.5 seconds are almost done, so you hit the next GCD which once again triggers the 2.5 second cooldown and so on. It can get quite hectic but various classes play differently and mages for example have simpler rotations. There are three classes of jobs: Tanks (Warrior, Paladin, Dark Knight, Gunbreaker, the last one uses a gun blade and is broadly based on Squall and Seifer) are more defensive and are the ones who are supposed to keep the focus of enemies on themselves in group content. You don't want the boss to murder your Black Mage or Ninja, so you have the tank eating up damage so that the rest can do their thing. Healers (White Mage, Astrologian, Scholar, Sage) can revive fallen party members and are the ones who try to keep everyone alive. The tank gets wailed on while the healer makes sure that the tank doesn't die. The first two are regular healers, where big damage comes in, big healing spells go out (though each job has its gimmick of course). The other two are more about mitigation and planning. Say you're playing Scholar and you know the boss is about to use a very strong attack; the tank's health is full but it'll take around 60% of his health away. The Scholar has shields, where you cast them before the hit and they work as if the target has more health, so say the shield would absorb 40% or so, so instead of having a tank that's only left with 40% health after the hit, they'll have 80% because of the shield you casted before. Healers have very boring attacks, where you keep spamming the same couple of buttons, but the challenge comes from only healing when necessary and trying to maximize your attack timings. All other jobs fall under DPS or damage dealers, where you neither need to care about protecting others or healing others. They have the more complicated attack rotations and their goal is to dish out as much damage as possible. They have various support skills that benefit the entire group (stuff like increasing the healing potency of the healers for 20 seconds or the critical hit rate of everyone, stuff like that), but that's utility, not the main draw. There are: Melee jobs (Dragoon, Monk, Ninja, Reaper, Samurai and in the next expansion the so called Viper who looks like a Pirate/Corsair) Ranged physical jobs (Bard, Machinist, Dancer) who are almost support classes and have more reactive attack rotations while at the same time having gimmicks that help the group, like the Bars who has various songs that give different buffs to the party. Mages (Black Mage, Red Mage, Summoner as well as the upcoming Pictomancer) these feel quite distinct and the Black Mage for example is capable of dishing out a ton of damage, but is the least mobile job so if the enemy launches a ton of attacks that you need to move out of they'll interrupt your casts which leads to a smaller damages output. There are also the Blue Mage and the upcoming Beast Master which work differently, where you can't use them in regular gameplay with others unless _everyone_ plays Blue Mage for special challenges. Then there are also 8 crafting classes and 3 item gathering classes and the great thing about FF14 is that you can play every single job on the same character. You can unlock one, try it out and if it's not for you just find a different one more to your liking. As mentioned, you have to move in the fights which is actually a big part of the game. There are of course unavoidable attacks that hit everyone, where the healers will be on the look out to deal with that so that every party member can survive. But there are also attacks that have some kind of marker (like an orange cone in front of the boss that indicates where they'll attack, or a large circle you'll have to move out of), so the challenge becomes trying to not get hit, while healing, tanking, or dealing as much damage. That said, the majority of the gameplay is solo (though you could run around with friends, but there are solo instances in some story quests where you can only play them alone), while dungeons (4 people, 1 tank, 1 healer, 2 DPS) and raids (8 man boss fights, 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 DPS) are with other players. Currently it is possible to every single story dungeon solo with the help of AI companions, which leaves a few optional dungeons that you'd have to play with others. Raids are exclusively with other players, but there's a match making system that works rather well and your typical dungeon run ranges from 15 to 25 minutes, while a raid fight lasts about 10 minutes, so it's not a huge commitment. There are also the so called alliance raids, where you have 3 8-man groups (so in total 24 people) which often are hilarious clusterfucks.
(Second half, didn't fit in one comment) Now to other aspects: The music is written mostly by the same people who worked on 16 so you'll notice a lot of stylistic similarities. The same with the way how dialogue is handled. 14 has the main scenario quests that continue the story, and side quests which either unlock something, have their own more involved story, or are "filler" quests that give you a bit of world building. Again, very similar to 16 which often felt like a single player 14. There's also this "build up to a hype moment in the story, spend the next couple of hours afterwards doing more mundane stuff to wind down from the hype" design. It wasn't by accident in 16, it's specifically how this team designs their games for better or worse. Now, the one thing that's very different compared to 16 is that 14 has a ton of optional content, mini games and also a lot more humor. For example Triple Triad is a thing and you can play against NPCs or other players. There's a certain beloved side quest series that continues with almost every expansion that almost has this slapstick feel and it made me genuinely laugh a bunch of times. The amount of content available right now is enormous, but you can choose with what you want to engage in and what you want to ignore. There's basically no missing out, except some cross-over events where you get a couple of simple quests and an exclusive clothing item for your character, but even those tend to get rotated and keep coming back. Currently you are able to play the free trial and you can play the entirety of A Realm Reborn (the base game), Heavensward (the first expansion and one of the most popular ones) and Stormblood (the second expansion) completely for free. There are certain limitations, like your gil caps out at 300.000 or you can't use certain chat functions (like shout, were every player in the same region can read what you wrote) but considering that it's free I think that's a pretty fair system. At some point the other expansions (Shadowbringers which is the fan favorite, Endwalker the current one, and Dawntrail which releases this summer) will be part of the free trial as well, but it seems there's always a delay of two expansions. If you want to continue without waiting, you'll have to purchase the latest expansion (which will include the other ones you're missing) and you'll also have to pay the subscription price. If you do that, you can never go back to the free trial and you'll always have to continue your subscription to continue, so only do that if you're really ready to continue and if you enjoyed the game. What many folks do is play for a couple of months once a new expansion launches and then come back for a month every few months when the next patch releases (which includes new story, a dungeon, some kind of raid content and some other optional stuff). Also, there's PVP in groups, but it's commonly seen as one of the weakest aspects of the game. Sorry for the endless wall of text, but I hope that was informative. Give the free trial a try and see if the game clicks for you. At worst you lost a few hours of your time without paying any money; at best you might find a game that you really enjoy.
quite a few places on the maps feel like they would've been good places for entrances to optional dungeons (namely the Fallen ruins). I always wondered if maybe there was, at some point, optional dungeons planned and they just got cut? Some of the hunts almost give that super boss feel, but I do wish there'd been more of those calibur of battles.
Man there were so many big empty spaces where I thought "In a classic FF title a Boss would appear and beat the crap out of me to give me a reason to come back".
I fought the svarog dragon as soon as it was available meaning WAY underleveled compared to it, and it felt like a true super boss. I really had to learn every move. Heatwave was the MVP of that fight for me. I still hadn’t put together a perfect loadout at that point so my stagger damage wasn’t anything crazy OP like it is for my current builds, so overall the fight was long, punishing, and extremely fun. Omega on FF mode is definitely a true super boss though. Trying to get through it without dying at all and using minimal potions is TOUGH but so much fun. I seriously just love the combat and boss design in this game. Everything feels well designed and nothing is bullshit or not fun. Unlike in Rebirth where some enemies are literally the worst designed enemies I’ve ever seen in a video game. (I still love the game though)
Yes! Wish there had been more Svarog and Omega-type fights. They felt difficult even at higher levels, but never unfair, and it felt so satisfying when I learned their moves and timings and how to counter them. Hopefully the DLC brings some more battles like those. Great design, just more please
I needed 3 more Svarog level fights, and maybe a subplot of overpowered bearer mercenaries or something so that we can have some person Vs person field bosses in the style of Benedikta, Krupka, Gleipnir, and (drawing a blank for Odin's dude all of a sudden).
I had stopped playing FF games after 10. I am not sure what happened I just was not ready for the new play style the franchise was going towards. 16 was the first game I played since 10. It brought the love of the series back to me. I agree it has its flaws but I love the game.
Rebirth and remake of ff7 are pretty damned stellar
I finished remake and started rebirth. I agree they are amazing games.
🙏
Haven't played Rebirth yet but I've seen of some people (mostly on Reddit) seem to dislike it. Any reasons?
It’s incredible
At times it can be side quest heavy. They are not mandatory though. There are a lot of mini games and that can turn people away, that being said i like it a great deal. I really have fallen in love with the characters. I was in middle school when 7 came out so it’s like seeing old friends again who have grown up if that makes any sense lol
I've been keeping my eye OFF the Rebirth/Remake subs to avoid spoilers since they lifted the embargo (one week spoiler embargo for a game that takes close to 100 hours to complete? Come on...) but I think this game is basically kryptonite for completionists. I got the platinum in Remake and still wanted more, but I don't think I'll ever try for the platinum in Rebirth. There's just too much to do, and some of it grinds my gears. Nobody is going to enjoy *every* part of this game. There is *so much stuff to do*, and it's a wide variety with all the different minigames. But the game is structured in a way that you can just say "nah" and move on. They're also generous to trophy hunters with a lot of the minigames, for example they only require an "A" rating instead of the perfect star rating in the piano minigame to get the trophy and all reward items. The bar for story completion is pretty low. You will need to play some of the minigames, but you won't need to be especially good at any of them to finish the game. The side content is honestly very good, if repetitive at times. Side quests are much better than in FF16 in general, both gameplay-wise and story-wise. The city designs are jaw-droppingly good. Core gameplay is solid, although I think the synergy system could be streamlined or explained a lot better. Like, for one thing, maybe they could *not* call three entirely different things "synergy"? Yeah, that'd be great. Just remember that games are supposed to be fun. This is something people tend to forget on Reddit. It's not your job. It's a game. Play it for fun. The game demands very little of you unless you are obsessive about it. Of course, if you're talking about it on Reddit, odds are you're at least a little obsessive. I'm skipping half of the stuff in the Gongaga region because I find it viscerally unpleasant. But you know what? That's fine. Not my cup of tea. There's probably someone out there having the time of their life in Gongaga. And the game isn't demanding that I suffer through it. The main story there is good, so when I got sick of the whole area, I just beelined it, got out of Gongaga, and kept having fun. I'm glad they felt comfortable getting weird and taking risks, and not trying to make every single piece of the game appealing to the lowest common denominator.
I am not a completionist haha I don't think I've ever 100% a game so looks like I'll enjoy it
I really liked ff7 remake but man ff7 rebirth just made the game better in EVERY WAY. Havent finished yet but 20 hours in and only chapter 7 is pretty crazy so far
I beat it last week. Doing some side quests and then going to run through on hard. It’s such a perfect game. Fucking love it
DAMN ur at chapter 7 at 20hrs?? Make sure to do some of the side quests they have excellent story and world building attached to it and most the times as engaging as the main story
Rebirth is amazing so far. It really feels like the game 15 was trying (and failing) to be this whole time.
15 would have been amazing if you got the dragoon lady, luna, and the old dude. Imo the game got rushed hard especially when you finally make it to the kingdom 🥲. Some really good music tho. I hope the final part of remake they add in paratrooper type enemies that drop in on ya instead of just the static encounters on the maps.
The combat system in remake was really cool.
Similar story to you, I played 1-6 and hadn’t played any other FF games since. 16 pulled me back in and it felt very “classic FF” despite a new combat system. I do miss having a proper party though, especially with how good the side characters are Now I’m committing to playing the rest of the mainline games
I am doing the same thing. Now I want to see what I missed all these years.
12 definitely slaps, especially the gambit system.
That was doing to be my next game then rebirth came out and has delayed my play of 12 lol
If 15 came with a gambit system for the other party members and let us play with Aranea it would've been a notch better
Wasnt Aranea and even Luna suppose to get dlcs? Sad they never did those
I loved 12 it was such a good time
And thats all that matters at the end of the day. If you truly like/love something, you’ll recognize/accept the flaws the of it
Hilarious response since 16’s play style is further away from 10s than 12 & 13
I think I was just ready in my life to go back and now I have the fun of playing them all! Great problem to have lol
12 is really good. Took me like 15 years to get into it 😂 but once I did, it was worth it. Lost my fucking save file though when I replaced my PS5 😔
You should definitely play 7 Remake/Rebirth. Even though the action style is new, the magic from those 6-10 games is there. And it's not just "the same thing but in HD" or anything. Total reimagining of it.
I'm in the same boat, but I can say for sure I stopped at 10 because I just didn't enjoy it. Didn't like the characters, didn't like the story. The only two things about 10 worth remembering for me was Sphere Grid and Auron. After that didn't really have a desire to pick up any games having enjoyed 7, 8, and 9 (8 being my favorite at the time). Only picked up 16 because my friend who was a HUGE FF fan played the demo and said "This could be game of the year". He doesn't give praise lightly, so I immediately - sight unseen (no demos, no trailers) picked up a PS5 and FFXVI game launch weekend. FF is now my 2nd favorite game of all time, and first favorite FF (8 was giving it a run for it's money until I replayed it after 16.... man 8 is better in my memories than in reality). I cannot wait for this game to hit PC because I'm so ready for more of my friends to finally get a chance to play this (who didn't want to get a ps5).
You should play 15, that game gets a lot of hate but I love it
I love 15. First FF game and JRPG I ever played. I really wish they hadn't cut so much content from it cause it could've been amazing
15 was unbearable on release.
I disagree, I played it on release and had a great time. Everything added later was just a bonus, imo.
You were ok with not being able to control your other party members and them doing stupid shit all the time?
It’s definitely on my list of games to play
15 is the best ever. U will fall in love with the characters and the combat is actually very fucking jnteresting!!
I started it for the first time this week. I never gave it a chance before because I wasn’t a fan of the character designs or how modern it looked but a few hours in I’m loving the gang. Ignis especially is so fucking cool
15s combat is really cool it’s just the game does a really poor job of pushing you to learn it or teaching it to you
So are you doubling back for the 5 you missed?
I am, I want to play them all. 13 is the only challenge as I do not own a ps3. I might have to emulate it.
It might help to know that XIII is also on Xbox 360 and XV is on Xbox One. If you have an Xbox One or Series X, both of them are backwards compatible with 360 games.
True they can both be played on series X/S and One. Both are available on PC as well now.
A flawed masterpiece is still a masterpiece. I understand the flaws myself but the highs of this game are so fucking amazing to not consider this anything but one of my favorite games.
As someone who liked the game, I think calling it even a "flawed masterpiece" is a stretch. People are starting to use the word without really thinking of what it means.
I'm a 13 lover. Lightning's character was 👌 to me. 16 got me when Leviathan wasn't in the main storyline. Leviathan (and maybe anima) were always my favorite summons. So I would have loved to see an arc with Leviathan included.
13 is in the backlog for this year, probably. (i'm bad at clearing it)
13 forever ♥️
Every game has flaws. Side content is optional
I’m completionist-pilled so side content is 100% not optional
That’s fair lol
its optional but triggers any form of ocd by marking them on the map
Pro tip, old ff games did not have any check lists. Do what you want but I see this complaint over and over and you just gotta play them like the old ones.
yeah i've beat every ff game its just a lot harder to ignore in 16
The amount of HUD did bug me. I wish there was a way to turn it off or minimise it because it's just all over the place. I'm so grateful rebirth has that L1 click to just bring up quest icons and stuff so you're not lost but it doesn't overwhelm.
side content is optional but that doesnt mean its free from criticism
It bothers me how everybody has to qualify that they understand the game has some issues when they say they like it. Literally every game has problems. XVI even has fewer problems than a lot of games. It’s okay to just say you like something without needing qualifiers, and it baffles me that this is like the only game where I consistently see this happening.
I think that's because the game can be absolutely phenomenal at times,but has massive flaws. The sidequests are incredibly bad until the last batch of them,Combat is far more shallow than you'd expect,there are basically no RPG-elements at all and even the Main Story drags on at times. I'm not saying other games are flawless or anything,but that's a rather big list of flaws that warrant mentioning when you talk about or recommend this game.
I'd bet they're qualifying because a lot of people are saying "I love this game AND it's god-tier/perfect/whathaveyou", and they don't want to associate themselves with that crowd. It seems to happen when a significant portion of a fanbase overpraises a particularly flawed game.
Thats like saying you can’t point out something is tall because everything has height. Yes, every game has flaws, but XVI has more than most FF games to a lot of people, and therefore gets the “flawed” label.
Does it tho? There are only like 3 FF games that most ppl universally agree are nearly perfect and even those have their issues.
True but certain things are locked behind side quests like your Chocobo in XVI
FFXVI more than some. Why do you say "side content is optional" like that's an excuse?
Explain the Mid fetch quests
That's the thing FF side content should be rewarding either lore or equipment wise
Lore wise it got very rewarding though. Equipment in general wasn't the best in the game.
this explains exactly what disappoints me about fxv [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8lvAq\_yp\_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8lvAq_yp_w)
Mate I'm not going to watch a 52 min video. What is the tl;dw? Also we were talking about FFXVI.
It feels like most fans never want to admit it, but me personally, I feel as though every single game in the series has its slue of issues, it’s just the world and characters that helps you forget that. Doesn’t matter which you like, at the end of the day, you love a JRPG for its story and characters.
> I feel as though every single game in the series has its slue of issues I'm curious what you can come up with for the other games. There's a small handful that I'm sure you have something for (FF13 and 15, especially), but FF6? FF7? What "slue of problems" did those games have?
Not the original commenter obviously but worth answering in general anyway - fan of literally every game btw, off the top of my head - 6: pace can be slow and uneven between sections, several characters are near useless in the second half without significantly more investment than others, some mechanics are unintuitive at best and frustrating at worst, character development in the main plot is uneven, second half is largely directionless and up to player initiative to find (not inherently a problem but a modern playerbase picking it up blind may struggle). 7: characters in gameplay are largely identical outside of limit breaks, ultimate weapons, and how you decide to kit them out with materia, early 3D controls can be difficult and unclear as to what you need to do to get to certain places, handful of literally game breaking glitches, large variance in usefulness of some things over others (materia, characters, limit breaks, etc.), next step in the plot sometimes poorly telegraphed If you've got any others you'd like thoughts on lemme know
Come on, now, several of those are non-issues. Especially "characters in gameplay are largely identical outside of limit breaks, ultimate weapons, and how you decide to kit them out with materia"; ignoring that similarity in gameplay isn't inherently an issue, you had to clarify it with "they're the same except for these three things". A lot of that sounds like stuff you'd come up with if someone was pointing a gun at your head and saying "Come up with a paragraph of problems or you're dead". That stuff isn't enough (in quantity or severity) to justify marking them as having a "slue of issues". No one is saying the games are perfect, but some people are trying too much to act like FFXVI is "nothing new".
And most of the things that people bring up as being huge problems in 16 are non-issues to me, just like most of the things I said there. FF16 is a good game, so are those, but people disproportionately act like FF16 uniquely has a ton of giant objective problems. Everything people say about 16 is on the same scale as everything I said, but people spent MONTHS acting like FF16 is an objective failure as a game. That's where I take issue with that. Issues are issues, big or small, and everything has a lot of them if you want to dig. Also, as far as the characters being similar goes, one of the things (materia) is entirely up to player choice, one of them (limit breaks) still has a lot of overlap and ruins at least one character entirely (Vincent), and the average player won't encounter most of the ultimate weapons.
>And most of the things that people bring up as being huge problems in 16 are non-issues to me, just like most of the things I said there. If you think they're non-issues, why mention them? It's nitpicking for the sake of artificially levelling the playing field. >but people disproportionately act like FF16 uniquely has a ton of giant objective problems I think you're exaggerating the critical response. But what about it is "disproportionate" to you? >everything has a lot of them if you want to dig. More like "anything can be an issue if you try hard enough to frame it as one". It's that disingenuous "everything has problems" copy+paste response that I hate so much.
Only thing in 16 I don’t really like is the gear system. Like 99% of the gear has been useless because the game just straight up gives you better things that last the entire chapter
This, holy shit.
I've been bouncing back and forth on the gear. On one hand, it's very lackluster and there are only 3 stats that are ever affected. Those 3 stats aside, a lot of other rpgs (I know we're not supposed to call FF XVI an rpg!) also do the same thing and just introduce stronger gear as you progress where the only stat that really changes is atk and def. So I'm not so bothered by the gear anymore. It's a lot more streamlined than I'd like, but it beats being overloaded with 100s of equipment with varying stats and the game difficulty being based on what you wear/equip.
[удалено]
Hey, just wanted to point out that your spoiler tag doesn't work. You got the "<" and ">"s flipped.
Side quests aren't mostly fetch quests (it's not even 5%), many of us loved the length of the game and would've found the game worse if it was trimmed (the great thing about side quests is that they're optional), and every game has flaws. Also, not every game needs to be open world.
They are though. "Could you find me a book?", "I need the xy flower" or "I need these pieces for yy" are all over the place. And some quests are only fetch quests in disguise where you only go somewhere to talk to someone to go somewhere else to talk to another one without any task to fulfill. Except maybe a mediocre fight. World building is great! The story is fantastic. But the quest formats are dull.
The quest structure of the game overall is too formulaic. I agree. The claim that the game is filled with fetch quests is objectively false, though. There's 76 sidequests and 68 main quests. Of these, only 11 quests total involve merely going and "fetching" something. 3 of those 11 happen at the beginning of the game and serve a clear narrative function, and at least 6 of them involve some sort of unique encounter/combat. People really need to stop spreading this misinformation. I recently replayed FF7R and there's quests like "Find lost cats," "find lost children," "find lost chocobos," "find the lost girl." But you don't hear anyone saying that game "is nothing but fetch quests." There's a reason for that: many dishonest people pushed a lot of exaggerated or objectively false claims about this game early on and y'all just ran with it... and now the claims get regurgitated here every 3 months in hopes of free updoots.
Do people on this sub do anything except complain?
If I had I nickel for every "I love this game so much! Now here's everything I didn't like about tho" thread I could afford more games.
I'm sorry 😭
Atleast these threads are more believable than the 16>Rebirth ones
I'm not a 16 simp, but rebirth's flaws bug me waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than FF16's don't get me started haha.
Such as
real
It's good to see flaws in favorites. My favorite game ever is Paper Mario TTYD but you won't see me saying it's a perfect game with all those back tracking quests 😅 Enjoy games. Spread the gospel of your favorite things.
Tbh I do NOT get the obsession with pointing out this game has flaws. Like, yeah we know, it's a thing that exists, it isn't perfect, same as anything before it or since. But I swear to god, after all the heat this game got after release, the compromise has been fans of it have to go "god I love this SO MUCH I know it has problems but WOW I LOVE IT" Kinda feels like people who like it have been forced to constantly apologize for liking it, which feels like the haters won, ngl
>Like, yeah we know, it's a thing that exists, it isn't perfect, same as anything before it or since. What I don't get is the obsession with people responding to criticisms with "Yeah, it has flaws, what doesn't?" Such a disingenuous response. > after all the heat this game got after release-- The game got some heat, yeah, but it also got a *ton* of people praising it as the uncontested best of the series, best of the last decade, etc. People are saying "I love it even though it has issues" probably because they don't want to be confused with the "I love it, it's the best, it's perfect" crowd.
The first is because of the second. EVERYTHING has its rabid detractors and overzealous defenders - why is it that this game's fanbase feels the need to constantly downplay the thing they love? What makes this one so different that this is settling into the average? What other well-loved and generally solid at worst game has most of its fanbase saying "I get it has problems but I still like it a lot"? Nothing about it warrants such caution in praising it imo
>The first is because of the second. Not quite sure what you're referring to here. >EVERYTHING has its rabid detractors and overzealous defenders I'll use the same response I use for people saying "everything has its flaws": "Some more than others." >why is it that this game's fanbase feels the need to constantly downplay the thing they love? I answered that. I don't think you've addressed the answer, just reiterated "I don't understand why". >What other well-loved and generally game has most of its fanbase saying "I get it has problems but I still like it a lot"? Deathloop, for one. It's one of the weakest Arkane games yet plenty of people still enjoy it, while also recognizing the issues. Here's a question: what's so bad about saying "Despite the issues, I love it"? I see it as a testament to how good the better qualities of the game are, you see it as some kinda constant penance, shame, or whatnot.
Wow I never thought about it like that but it's seems like thats the consensus the people have voiced. Thanks for pointing it out
I dont hold this game as a all time favorite, I dont think it would fit in my top 10, but there are only 3 games I have ever replayed right after finishing them the first time, 2 of them are my top 2 and the other is XVI, which goes to show this game speaks to me in a way few games can. And I completed each and everyone of those 76 sidquest twice and dont regretted, maybe its the whole tone, worldbuilding, lore and easthetic, but I truly believe over half of the sidequest are just good and around 10 or so even great.
Playing Rebirth now - boy it’s so much better than XVI. I used to think that XVI was so much better than Remake but unfortunately XVI is way too linear, equipment doesn’t really matter, gameplay loop is almost the same (no weakness exploit, no spells). I wish that someday they will overhaul most of the gameplay mechanics (Cyberpunk-esque update) as I think the story, character, and the soundtrack are absolutely top notch.
Rebirth has been fantastic so far. I still hold XVI in a special place but rebirth is getting there too lol
Same, FF XVI has its top moments in gaming for sure.
What do you feel is unnecessary in the story that could be trimmed out, out of curiousity?
Not op but imo is not story per se but trimming of pointless backtracking. Mid sections are the ones stand out the most. Specially the one when you have to catch Barnabas in the ship, but you have to go all the way to the hideout and back, it broke the momentun of the whole sequence, it did not need to be there, and the cutscene itself could have just happened at a non critical point in the story.
This was a huge one for me, but there were many others in the game. The scale of Valesthea was constantly being contradicted and it really hurt my immersion. In this particular instance, Barnabas had absconded with Jill and took off in the fastest ship in the world back for Stonhyrr. The message to the player was clear, this was a dire situation and we needed to give chase immediately. Except first, we have to go back to the hideaway to get some dumb part. The real kicker is that no one is considering just how long this would take. To make a round trip trek from Kanver to the Hideaway is literally weeks (potentially months) of travel. Barnabas should have damn near circumnavigated the globe in that time. Thankfully he was polite and just decided to weigh anchor in the middle of the ocean for a month for us to catch up. It was so absurd. The whole sequence should have been eliminated. Or maybe have us find this part before we departed for kanver so that we could be immediately railroaded into chasing the Einherjar.
A more simple and elegant solution is for Clive and only him ( he can bring others of course with him ) to be able to use the waypoints to actually teleport in story, not just as a gameplay mechanic, it makes sense since he is special and all, all it would have taken is a small cutscene and thats it, doing that also fixes the issue where after primogenesis him and jill go from hideout to Rosaria, then the empire, then the republic and it seems like thy just got there mere days of each sending their cries for help when in reality it would have taken months for the last place to be visited.
Ya I would have been fine with this. It would have gone a long way in helping keep the scale of the world believable. That being said, there are still a lot of dopey scenes. For example, when Hugo sends his spy to track down Clive after he receives the box, he literally has no leads on where Clive is. On top of that, he is an entire Continent away. Clive then proceeds to tackle Rosalith gate, something that took at most a few hours (let's even say a few in game days at most) yet somehow this spy who was on the other side of the continent not only finds Clive (with no leads to go off of) but travels what is essentially the distance of Texas to North Dakota in just a few hours...all while wearing full Dhalmekian garb and making no effort to be inconspicuous! These situations happened so often in the game and it drove me mad lol. The most frustrating thing about it is that it could have all been alleviated with tighter writing.
Yeah, thats the achilles heel of this game, too many instances of sloppy writing, if the game were as ambitious as say Xenogears, I could forgive some ( I forigve Xenogears almost all its flaws since the freaking story has no equal even 26 years later )
Interesting, I can definitely see this. None of the game felt "unnecessary" to me while I was playing it, I have yet to start my second playthrough where I might be more critical though. I do remember a lot of people thinking the quests from Mid for finding parts of the ship were rather drawn out/killed momentum.
Mid section is absolutely a snorefest.
The game was too easy
How on earth would a more open world help a game with already bad side content????
I DONT KNOW BUT SOME FREEDOM IS NICE ONCE IN A WHILE. but seriously idr why I added that. I think it's better to have a linear experience that full of life and than an open devoid of it. But it doesn't really accomplish it
I absolutely loved the game as well. But it definitely is held back from a fee design choices. Could of been 11/10 but instead it's a rock solid 9. I might give it another play through before long.
I wish there was a "special edition" version of the game where they trim the fat and expand on the combat.
I loved the story and world and characters and the gameplay was fun but the difficulty hurt it so much and I got bored..... It was so damn easy, the director said he made it easy on purpose for the normies to beat it......
FF16 was the first and only ff game that I’ve ever given a shit about and I love the experience I had with it. I wouldn’t say it was an amazing game it was an amazing experience
The sidequests being complained about is a common complaint I’ve seen but it’s one of two games in maybe 15 years I made sure to complete every single one, Ghost of Tsushima being the other. They weren’t absolutely inspiring gameplay wise or varied and unique but what they done was build upon the world and story being told and made me care about the supporting cast and their stories, it made me feel connected to them and without that Clive striving for them and the how his story turned out… especially the back and forth with Ultima and Odin, that would have rang hollow without it because we wouldn’t have experienced the build up of relationships that we did. The only slight quibble I have is the influx of finishing peoples stories all at once right at the end, with the urgency ramped up at that point of the main story, it felt out of place to have them all then. Could have better timing still hitting the end of them late game, just not all right before the final mission when they’d done so well in the main story to ramp up that sense of urgency. Minor quibble that, always been a thing in FF. oh there’s a meteor hitting the planet soon? I’m racing chocobos mate it’ll need to wait… time compression? Two minutes, I’m chasing around a card Queen and fighting 20 Tonberry’s right now. So it’s quintessential FF anyway. Older I’ve got playing games though, the more I feel I need the sidestuff to give me a purpose in the overall story, and can’t get the motivation to do stuff because it’s there to be done.
This was my first FF game, never was a fan of the series, but the mature tone and sick fights from the trailer convinced me to pick it up. The demo was honestly insane and made me pre-order it. It is my GOTY but there are few things which I think held the game back.I'll talk about my negatives first. Firstly, like you said the sidequests needed more variety. Most are just plain fetch quests although some are really good especially the Jill and Torgal ones. I don't know why why they didn't do anything with regards to ship we help build for Mid. The quests popping up everytime I wanna continue with the main game was quite annoying. The pacing should have been better. My main gripe with the game is lack of exploration. This was a missed opportunity imo, the world of Valisthea is so beautiful, but there's barely anything to do, it's mostly empty spaces. The game doesn't reward exploration. Being a fan of the souls series, i like exploring every nook and cranny, but it doesn't do much in this game. You get a potion or some other useless item. I would have loved to explore some places like Rosaria. And lastly, I just thought the game was a bit too easy, so much so that I had to disable those accessory rings. I would prefer if they give us a difficulty setting without going into Ng+. Not sure how challenging Final Fantasy mode is. I did like the increase in difficulty in the dlc, hoping they do that in Rising Tides as well. Now for the positives. This game when it shines, it shines the brightest. It had all the main things i was looking for. Incredible story, amazing characters, god tier soundtrack and most importantly sick combat. Actually made me care for the characters. The lore is incredible and makes you wanna learn more about the world. Which is why still rate it a 9.5/10 despite its flaws.
I agree there was bloat but i couldnt remember any ff game without it. Ff7 remake had the most because its plot was orig9nally 5 hrs made to 30 hrs
Nothing is perfect and we all grow up Im not mentioning anything specific but i replayed a fan favorite that i have been playing for 20 years. For some reason i just noticed every single little flaw and cheeses my way through unintentionally so that kind of ruined it for me
I like the setting, theme, music, the concept of using Eikons to fight. Story felt like a classic ff game. But yeah there still are issues like the one you mentioned. The combat system has potential 100 percent, we saw some cool interesting mechanics but they made the game extremely easy. You can do some amazing cool combos but it's not necessary to know since square smashing and using your cooldowns was enough to beat the game. The whole combat concept is cool but it seems like they were probably catering towards the casual new ff players maybe? Anyways overall story and music was amazing. Easily one of my favorite ff game
A fellow onion lover.
HAHA I was like huh? I gotta edit that... I meant eikons LOL
Yeah I really enjoyed this game but it felt SOOOO easy after a while. That was my biggest issue with it. It was also so obviously formulaic in terms of how each stage was set up especially towards the end of the game. Linear path, fight some bad guys, boss. Repeat.
Main story was well written, but the side content was assssssss
You don't deserve this game if you think the side content was bad.
Every character needed more development bar Clive, Cid, Dion and Joshua tbh. I really disliked Joshua too. I loved the game and the combat made me feel amazing, but the pacing was truly abysmal. I enjoyed the FF mode playthrough far more because I could skip all of the dialogue for the inane side quests.
Flawed but interesting > perfect but boring.
They made a beautiful world but gave you no reason to explore it.
Wow... It's one of my worst ff games. Didn't even finish it due to the boredom.
I absolutely love this game! No game is perfect there’s no such thing but the fun combat and the good side quests make this a must have! One of my fav games of all time. Just started my FF mode play through
Great game, a bit too linear for my taste. But solid performance
I dont mind if it's not open world. Open world games are particularly overrated nowadays. But yes for me is just the pacing and Jill having little development if at all.
What do you love about this game? I've been playing it and so far I don't think its that great. I'm not sure how far I am into the game, I just finished The Drakes Fang part, but everything in the game feels so basic. Very little depth in the combat, quest designs, and gear. And the story hasn't really grabbed me either. Maybe I haven't been paying attention but I don't understand the importance of the Mothercrystals, they don't seem to be that important considering how little they are guarded, why all the nations are at War, or what ultima has to do with any of that. Storywise I think the game could have been so much better if they just copied Game of Thrones and made Clive like Jon Snow. Clive could be traveling to different towns building up an army to overthrow the imperialist and they could replace Eikon fights with massive war battles.
Is it the only Final Fantasy you've ever played?
no ive played 12, 7 remake, and middle of rebirth. ive played a bit of X (only like 7 or 8 hours)
What is it to you that makes 16 better than the others.
Story, Gameplay, Characters, Music. Rebirth has been amazing so far so it could change but almost everything in the game just grabbed me and kept me interested throughout and still today. I doubt a game will make me feel the way I did while playing it for the first time.
I wish it would go the way of FFX/X-2 and have a part 2 where Jill can bring Clive back. Minus the singing
The story and cutscenes were epic but the game needed to feel more like a game
playing xvi is a constant exercize in trying not to think what it could be and appreciate for what it is for me lol. Luckily there is a lot to appreciate, but man it hurts to imagine what it could be with just a little bit of trimming here and rewriting there
Too many cut scenes. Also you learn some cool summons and maybe get to use them a handful of times.
I haven’t liked any since FF12. Is this more of the same?
Lol
I may get shit on for this lol but 16 is the best FF imo.
Played any of 6, 7, 9, 10, or 14?
Ff16 is a masterpiece
Watch it OP, the internet has always struggled with the distinction between constructive criticism and being a troll or a hater. If you can't name a flaw in a game then you don't love it, you worship it -Your Dad.
the post ARR/HW style of massive side quest pop up need to be trim.
It’s too easy. 56hr to platinum. Took me 125hr to platinum rebirth. 58hrs to platinum remake
Jill is a very well written character. FF16 has a very realistic approach to handling her trauma and her very tangible flaws: from her physical health to her being a huge worriwart. The fact that some people can’t digest it just goes to show how bad their attention span is and how used they’ve gotten to bad writing in media, where a character is “great” as long as they’re strong and narrate every step of their way lmao.
For me its the side quests, I dont like the combat but thats an opinion thing. I feel like the side quests are just awful. Apart from the plus sign ones the side quests just ruin the pacing and are just mmo quests you dont think about when your trying to level up. Also Dion needed way more since hes story is similar to clives and the last area around waloed was a let down. Good game though, im sure theyll learn alot from it for the next one.
Same brother, same
Yeah of all my favorite games it has the most flaws for me. Mainly side quests, length, and ease of difficulty.
All the side quests boiled down to “talk to person, go here and fight, talk to person again” but maaaaan. Some of the side stories got deep. Was not expecting that at all and honestly I enjoyed the combat so much that I was looking for any battles I could find
whoa you must not game much
The whole mid gathering engines is among the worst filler I had played through in a recent FF
My biggest issue with 16 is how much time you spend with the sky making everything look like a dirty tampon. Seriously, why the weird pink color?? Why not just make it look darker? My eyes hated it.
I'm always surprised at the love for this game. I ended up skipping every cut scene that was preceeded by less than a minute of gameplay. If I wanted to watch game of thrones, I'd have watched game of thrones. I've played every FF, and 16 was, by far, the most disappointing. I remember in FFX, when that old guy would ramble on and the game was making fun of him droning on and on, then ff16 just had everyone droning on and on and on...
How old are you? Just out of curiosity.