final fantasy xvi
RAGE! I sing of arms and the man, doomed by fate. FF16 wants so many things - to be truly epic, to be video games' Game of Thrones, to be a worthy heir to the Final Fantasy namesake, to be an accessible, dynamic action title that still has enough of the RPG trappings to make it recognizable and interesting. It succeeds at virtually none of them, hobbled by a fundamental lack of imagination.
FFXVI's demo hit in a way I was fundamentally unprepared for. It was out-and-out action, even more protagonist-focused than FF7R's streamlined system. It was playing with big ideas - your hero's dad owns slaves? Square Enix is really gonna take this on? More than anything, it felt fun to play, and the climax of the demo puts Clive - our hero - in a position where he's seemingly committed an inviolable sin against his family. I was ready. Final Fantasy was back.
Except that FF16's one constant is writing checks that it absolutely cannot cash.
The action's 5-second loop is fun, but it never dives any deeper than it does past the first few hours. The basic combat loop you've grown used to in the early game is never shaken up by new powers (none of which are as combat-essential as your initial set) nor by enemies (those enemies that do use buffs or conditions are few and far between, and can be brute-forced so easily that I often wound up brute-forcing them without realizing circumstances had changed.)
Despite a promising cast of characters, there's no party mechanics to speak of, despite the fact that one of your initial powers includes a taunt. Everyone simply runs along side you, doing their thing. The closest approximation is having an ever-loyal dog that you can ask to use Attack 1, Attack 2, or the Weakest Heal Spell in the World.
Either a good action game or a good party RPG would be fine! Instead we get neither. Both of which might be negligible if the world was fun to engage with - but the vast, beautiful fields and forests and deserts of Valisthea are full of a few enemies and not much else. Side quests amount to "go kill these enemies," often for the lamest reasons possible. And the reward for doing so is ... an endless barrage of crafting materials for a system that may as well not exist. A linear path of upgrades for your main weapon are the only thing worth investing in, and you have those upgrades handed to you on a platter.
And once again - these are things I could excuse, that I could let slide, if the story got me, but it simply is not there. It is the story of the one special boy who can do no wrong, who everyone loves no matter what. Whose core driving motivation is invalidated and set aside as quickly as it's developed. Whose anger and capacity for murder and fiery vengeance should be core to the entire experience, and are window dressing. There are no tough truths to confront or difficult choices to make. There's just the Right Thing to Do, and You, the Only One who can Do it, because you're the best one at killing things.
Much is made of the big cinematic Eikon fights, which are visually spectacular. The two earliest ones are terrific, because they have narrative weight behind them. Everything past that point hollow and empty. The very next one happens because of a misunderstanding, and one that never goes addressed in the game. The one after that happens because a would-be ally is temporarily craAAaaAAaaazy. There's no question of who is going to win, of who is going to proven right.
It's you. It could only have ever been you. For a game whose core heroic message is that you can break free of fate's shackles, and forge your own path through the world, it is resolutely opposed to giving you any kind of hindrance, of challenge, of any decision to make of consequence.
I desperately wanted this game to be good. It wasn't, and I have such a hard time imagining what lies on the other side for Final Fantasy that, like Achilles, all I can do is sulk in my room, raging at what should have been.