FINAL FANTASY XVI

oh wow this really is a yoshi-p game huh, FFXIV solved the same problem the same way

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hahaha I came here to make a blue quest joke

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This game just keeps going. I keep thinking Iā€™m at the end, and then the final battle gets delayed once more and suddenly 15 new side quests pop up around the world. I want to be done!

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I finally finished this game, including all the side quests. My thoughts:

Donā€™t do all the side quests. Itā€™s just not worth it. Iā€™ve said it before: Just do the plus sign ones. And you can do any of them that revolve around your dog, those are nice.

Ultima is SUCH a boring villain. This team has done the whole ā€œancient dead civilization needs to destroy you in order to revive themselvesā€ premise before but in a much more nuanced and compelling way. Ultima is completely devoid of character, just this rambling monotone fish-eyed nothing. Itā€™s like they thought, ā€œhmm, what did fans like about Emet-Selch? Certainly not his charisma and humor, cut all that out. Letā€™s just put the Night King from Game of Thrones in his placeā€ That last third of the game where all the political intrigue theyā€™ve been halfheartedly building up suddenly drops away and youā€™re just focused on Ultima, itā€™s so rough.

Toward the end of the game thereā€™s a sidequest with Mid that really summed up everything I disliked about its writing. Earlier youā€™d gone through a whole lot of dull questing to help Mid build a ship for you and your merry band to use. To aid her in building the ship, the game literally has you travel across the map to goā€¦ collect sand. Itā€™s like, ā€œalright, this is boring but Iā€™m gonna get A SHIP!! Maybe itā€™ll be a classic FF airship even!ā€ Well, itā€™s not an airship, itā€™s just a boat. But worse, itā€™s not a boat you ever get to control or really do anything with. Itā€™s a plot device, you just see it in cutscenes.

So then many hours later, in the last stretch before the finale, Ultima creates this big floating crystal island and thereā€™s much discussion about how youā€™re going to reach it up there in the sky. You get this side quest where you go to Midā€™s workshop again and sheā€™s like ā€œok, now that Iā€™ve built a shipā€¦ I think I can upgrade it intoā€¦ AN AIRSHIP!ā€ And youā€™re like "hm, this wasnā€™t a plus sign quest, but maybeā€¦ Maybe Iā€™ll get that cool airship finally! And at least get to see it in a cutscene I guess!

So she has you go do some bullshit I canā€™t even remember, probably collecting more sand or maybe a gear or something. When you get back to her, sheā€™s like ā€œoh yeah, about that airship? I decided not to build it. You see, it would be really cool, but maybe itā€™d eventually get used as a weapon of war by some other people, so even though you could really use it for your whole ultima thing, and Iā€™ve never minded building large vehicles before, I think Iā€™m going to shelve this one.ā€ So this is like the ultimate rejection of the fantastical parts of Final Fantasy, right? It dangles the classic FF airship in front of you and then snatches it away, like, we need to put away childish things, this just isnā€™t reasonable.

But then Mid says she drew up all the blueprints for the airship anyways, and sheā€™s going to bury them in a secret location and then widely publicize a riddle for how to find them, because sheā€™s amused by the thought of kings and rulers struggling to solve her riddle. Wait, hold up, do you want this ship to exist or not? You donā€™t want ME to have it because youā€™re afraid of its violent potential, but youā€™re happy with whatever random future person solves your riddle acquiring it? I just donā€™t know what the game was going for with this.

I did like the in-universe Final Fantasy name drop in the epilogue, that was clever. Kind of neat that this is a story about a fantasy world abolishing magic, havenā€™t seen that done that often.

I think on the whole Iā€™m glad I played this game. Itā€™s very mid, and very Mid. Thereā€™s some neat stuff in there, nice graphics, great music, some fun fist-pumping shonen anime fights. But it really goes off the rails partway through and never recovers. The constant Game of Thrones cribbing is embarrassing, and all the obvious stuff they ripped from it is not even done with the level of nuance or subtlety of that half baked TV show. Also, you could write a book about how poorly it treats the subject of slavery.

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WHAT IF EMET WAS BAD AND FROM GAME OF THRONES IM SO GLAD I DIDNT PLAY THIS AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

like which one of the team members still feels this strongly about game of thrones? like ffxiv has a ton of references in quest names nad dialogue that talks about game of thrones but it STOPS by shb/endwalker? like i thought they were over it, like everyone else who realized it was bad at the same time. but like, heres ffxvi! we started it before everyone hated got so we gotta just KEEP GOING i guess

all the talk i see everyone doing about slavery really makes me realize why they didnt put anyone but white people in the game, like its not good at all, theyre just covering their asses because they knew theyā€™d get smeared as fuck

its so fucking 2016 im surprised theres not a hillary analog

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the game started development when people still really liked game of thrones (2016!) so i am certain they literally just dumped too much money into this to change course at all. donā€™t develop your games around shit that might be stupid in half a decade when your game is actually done I guess.

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It is truly wild how much shit in this game is just a half-understood copy of a character or element from Game of Thrones too. Like, I thought from the trailers that this would just be aping the dark low-fantasy vibe of the show, but no, it is a shitty copy in so many ways.

White walkers, the Night King, Geoffrey, Cersei, the Iron Islands, Dorne, the one prince from Dorne everybody liked, Jon Snow, that one faithful dogā€¦ all of these and more are very obviously copied and pasted into the game, but refracted through a bunch of writers and developers that donā€™t understand subtext and REALLY donā€™t understand women.

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Literally the same thing could be said about FF12 (not the same villain name though) and Final Fantasy Tactics (same villain name this time though lmao)
Itā€™s a series tradition

JRPG plots tend to fizzle out towards the end because one dimensional universe ending menaces are added to ramp up the stakes

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Two DLCs just got announced at the Game Awards, lol. The first one was surprise released tonight!

The trailer made it look like theyā€™re using it as an excuse to bring in iconic Final Fantasy stuff. Iā€™m pretty sure I saw Omega in there, which is kinda fun, but of an FFXIV reprise maybe.

I honestly donā€™t want or need more of this gameā€¦ But for some reason Iā€™m tempted to give this a try on the off chance that itā€™s the goofy flamboyant final fantasy icing on a dreary cake. I hope.

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I meant to ask as I play 45 minutes once a weekā€¦are you happy you finished it?

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I dunno, I have conflicting feelings about it. I really enjoyed the first 3rd of the game or so, and I did have some occasional fun times with the rest of the game. Iā€™m not glad I did all the side quests, thatā€™s for sure. Iā€™d say itā€™s a decent game if you blast through it and only do the sidequests that unlock things. The big story beats and especially the wild eikon fights are probably worth sticking it out for.

I am not glad i powered through to the end despite finding the game quite detestable.

Iā€™d say it probably depends on how much you enjoy the highs (big boss battle eikon fights / soken score) and how much you can ignore the lows (the pointless Mook battles, the side quests, the questionable story decisions). What you see in the first 5-10 hours is pretty much what you get through the whole game. I kept waiting for the things other people were enjoying to reveal themselves to me but that sadly never came.

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Alort of graphics in this game. If youā€™re not interested in spectacle then there is nothing there.

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I was yelling at the game last night how it frequently looks bland compared to like Nier Ps3 or Death Stranding or dozens of other games.

I mean it frequently looks like they just turned off lighting effects.

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They saved it all up for the boss fights. As if itā€™s real life and it cost money everytime a particle effect is used. Thereā€™s at least 2 of them that go to really stupid Final Fantasy places qhich is goodd.

I completed the game and all the bad sidequests. I appreciated that you can just turn on the auto-fighting for the superbosses. Bar them, the combat is completely flat - the same combo and moves will take you through the entire game.

Ultimately XV is a more interesting game for me. This one seemed to be what they wanted it to be. Whatā€™s Final Fantasy without failure? In one ear and out the other.

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yeah this sums it up. itā€™s the first final fantasy since ix where its reach doesnā€™t exceed its grasp. it isnā€™t quite as boring as ix but itā€™s the same basic problem.

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I should sell this game just to be done with it. I now have my 4th Eikonā€™s powers. The battles are all the same, having more things I can do in battle feels like a hassle more than a privledge.

I never saw Game of Thrones but all the politicying scenes are embarassing.

My god they really have no fucking clue what to do with Jill.

The PS5 says I am at 59% at 20 hours. It is just going to keep dangling ā€œwhat is going onā€ until I scream.

It might be the worst written of the series magically. Not in a word to word sense (which is frequently at least colorful innit) but the plot sucks. I couldnā€™t ever follow what was happening in FFXV but at least it had a bunch of different stuff happening and then your boys were so charming.

I keep thinking how much cooler and more beautiful Elden Ring was.

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Donā€™t be like me! Listen to your instincts! All those things only get worse!

Its still kind of crazy that the team that made one of my all time favorite FF things (Shadowbringers) made my absolutely least favorite FF thing by a wide margin (FF16)

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Should of got the Heavensward people instead

(I think itā€™s the same people)

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They didnā€™t let ishikawa write it and itā€™s probably for the best because making the ff14 team make two games was a terrible idea and both of them have suffered immensely because of it. The current 14 expansion barely has any endgame content because they murdered half the team making the worst ff game in years, glad it was worth it, yoshi-p looked like total dog shit for months because he was clearly extremely stressed out and nobody even thinks the game is more than mid. Square sure loves fucking with their most profitable venture in baffling ways

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