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Anyone else feel like FF16 is aging like milk?

Tedditalk

Member
Loved the game first playthrough. Then I played it again and realized all the combat is in linear gauntlets with uninteresting enemy mixes. The story is nice imo, but the sidequests are mechanically dull and the variety in builds are too. It was very much a one and done experience for me. Maybe I will replay years down the line. What do yall think?
 

Puscifer

Member
Can't wait for it to come to PC then edit for it to drop half price. Turning it into a character action game is a weird choice, especially considering those styles of games are meant to be short and replayed as the first playthrough is almost always seen as a tutorial then you just get better on the harder difficulties.
 
Loved the game first playthrough. Then I played it again and realized all the combat is in linear gauntlets with uninteresting enemy mixes. The story is nice imo, but the sidequests are mechanically dull and the variety in builds are too. It was very much a one and done experience for me. Maybe I will replay years down the line. What do yall think?
What's you are describing is the demo. It was obvious what kind of game it would be from the moment I played the demo.
 

Faust

Perpetually Tired
Staff Member
Personally I still adore the game, even after 3 playthroughs on increasingly harder difficulties. I can easily see myself replaying this game in a year, like I do with other Final Fantasy titles.

The series has always been contentious with fans. Some folks like XIII, others despise it. Some consider FFXII to be the pinnacle, while others may have found something enthralling and memorably about XV. This has been the case since, at the very least, the 90s. As with any entry in any game series, you will often hear from the detractors and diehard fans more than you would the average person.
 
Loved the game first playthrough. Then I played it again and realized all the combat is in linear gauntlets with uninteresting enemy mixes. The story is nice imo, but the sidequests are mechanically dull and the variety in builds are too. It was very much a one and done experience for me. Maybe I will replay years down the line. What do yall think?
I noticed this immediately and once I did...

Final-Fantasy-9-quit.jpg
 

Crayon

Member
I'm looking forward to playing it. I got to say ff7r is the first ff game I've ever gone back to play, at least without having many years since the last play through. Hopefully 16 is that good.

Some people can take a story-heavy game and go through it three times though, so people can have very different tastes for that.
 

Myths

Member
Could be because it doesn’t have chock full of end-game content — quests, side missions, hidden areas or characters, and while it did have Hunts, not anywhere as in-depth and complex as XII’s. In the latter, there were riddles and level design which you had to think about to spawn them. You could lay down 200 hours in XII easily.
 
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Pasta la Vista

Gold Member
I enjoyed it a lot on the first play through. It's a solid game but going through the "hard mode" I just lost interest. It doesn't add enough challenge or nuance to the combat to make it really incredible.
There are some design decisions that stifled any challenge the may have had through use of elemental properties (there are none, despite each Eikon specifically representing a different elemental affinity)
The two time skips really destroy the pacing, certain characters are sidelined and never developed properly. The "Active time lore" is trash. It feels like the only reason it exists is to make up for the time skips and lack of cohesion in those areas.

It's still miles better than anything that came out of XIII or XV, but XVI feels very much a product of our modern era of gaming which basically puts bumper rails on everything for the sake of reaching a bigger audience. It ultimately feels contrived and held back by fear.
A fear that trivializes any mechanic that might have made the game more unique.
 
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Great games can still have prominent flaws. The unsatisfying side quests, unrewarding exploration, and comparatively weaker second half of the story do not erase the memorable characters, fun combat system, excellent voice acting, thrilling eikon fights, or any of the other things the game does really well.
 

Lethal01

Member
The combat just ruins it, not cause it's realtime action, but that there is zero challenge. No matter how hard you try.

What makes it worse is FF7 Remake just launched with the best combat in the series that combines it's best elements.
It too had meh challenge on first playthrough but that could be mitigated by limiting your own stats(not a proper solution) but with FF16 there is nothing you can do to make the combat even mildly threatening.

The plot and characters of 16 wish they were a quarter as fun as remake too.
 
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I’m maybe 20% through the campaign and right now it’s hard to imagine when I’ll ever get back to it. I enjoyed what I played but wasn’t special enough to keep me coming back.
 
The best games are those you can replay now or in a few years or so. Just like any FF game, I will never ever touch FF16 EVER again, won't double dip on PC, won;t even look at it anymore. It had some fucking EPIC moments like god damn that I'm sure will look even more amazing on PC at high framerates BUT in between those few moments, the game was absolute fucking boring.
 

Doom85

Member
I’m really struggling to keep playing it. Nier Automata was a perfect blend of character action and RPG. FF XVI is only being character action (and not as good as Nier Automata in that regard, or Devil May Cry for that matter) and barely cares about focusing on the RPG elements. The “but Final Fantasy has always changed” argument holds no weight as the series is an RPG series, you can change the style of RPG, but when you put that much focus away from the RPG element, it’s a serious departure.

The story and cast are fine, I guess. Cid is really the only one that interesting, helped by his god-tier dub actor. The problem is a good deal of the story is Tales of Berseria all over again and Berseria did it far better (for one thing, have the MC be the one to find out a certain reveal along with the audience instead of just revealing it for the sake of it. God, what an amateur writing move). The “Game of Thrones” elements barely work, I just feel the world and powers at play aren’t that interesting.

Music is really good (hey, it did learn something from Nier, though of course it’s not on par as Nier 1 and Automata are fucking legendary OSTs), I’ll give it that.

JRPG fans really can’t complain about people hoping some JRPGs take lessons from Baldur’s Gate 3 when one of the flagship JRPG series’ release this year seems to barely give a shit about being a RPG. A JRPG that became more like BG 3 is still more a JRPG than FF XVI is in my eyes.

Oh well, at least VII Rebirth looks promising. People can mock Nomura all they want, he at least knows how to stick to the gameplay genre of a series.
 

jimmypython

Member
great game. but I will likely not go for the FF difficulty play through for a while, despite of hearing great things about it...I personally just not a big fan of having to play the same story beats twice back to back. I miss the old FF games that were designed with longevity (super bosses, mini games, optional dungeons etc) without replay
 
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Neilg

Member
(for one thing, have the MC be the one to find out a certain reveal along with the audience instead of just revealing it for the sake of it. God, what an amateur writing move).

lol what. The entire point was that the players knew something Clive didn't. There was no reveal, we played it, there was just tension in the audience going 'oh shit he doesn't know he's gonna lose his mind when he finds out'
 
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Doom85

Member
lol what. The entire point was that the players knew something Clive didn't. There was no reveal, there was just tension in the audience going 'oh shit he's gonna lose his mind when he finds out'

Which undermines the emotional impact. In Tales of Berseria, my jaw dropped along with Velvet’s with the reveal (and the full details of what happened back then just twisted the knife further). Her becoming emotionally drained as she wondered what was the point of anything she had done resonated with me as I discovered this info along with her.

In XVI, it’s treated less emotionally and just “matter of fact”. Hell, why would a good story make a character’s emotional reaction something we know will happen far in advance? In what universe is that good writing?

But you know, maybe you’re right. Maybe George Lucas and co. should rewrite Empire Strikes Back and have the Emperor just casually refer to Vader being Anakin earlier in the film. Who cares if the audience along with Luke discovering the truth led to one of the most iconic moments in cinema ever, clearly what the audience really wanted was to know beforehand and thus lose any sense of shock when the main character finds out. CLEARLY. Also rewrite the original Planet of the Apes, obviously the film would be better if we knew where Taylor was well before he did.

The Office Reaction GIF


Also, yes, it’s objectively a reveal as we had no idea who the person‘s identity was. Even if you had guessed it, there was no proof prior.
 
I’m enjoying so far. But can’t say. Cause I hadn’t beating it. But I wouldn’t be surprise I have the same thought once I’m done.
 

sigmaZ

Gold Member
Loved the game first playthrough. Then I played it again and realized all the combat is in linear gauntlets with uninteresting enemy mixes. The story is nice imo, but the sidequests are mechanically dull and the variety in builds are too. It was very much a one and done experience for me. Maybe I will replay years down the line. What do yall think?
I barely enjoyed the first playthrough. Coming off of Octopath Traveler 2, Like a Dragon, and Tears of the Kingdom, FF16 barely did anything for me. The demo impressed me with the spectacle and voice acting, but the way they handled the plot, the exploration, and the gameplay (in and out of combat) just left me feeling meh. The music even disappointed despite some high points. I put the game down several times, even days at a time. The last part of the game just felt like a slog and I was just happy to be through it all. (I lost my mind at the quest late game where you have to talk to 10 people and that's the quest LOL).

Now I'm playing BG3 and I wouldn't touch FF16 again with a ten foot poll. BG3's dialogue and NPC camera framing I find far superior and immersive. I started skipping FF16 dialogue halfway through unless I found it engaging or important, but with BG3 I hang on to every word from every NPC.

I really hope FF17 is done by a different team and they just do the game in Unreal or something.
 

sigmaZ

Gold Member
Dodge simulator. How many presses of the R1 button can a single DualSense controller take?
Seriously halfway through the game it just started to feel like the only challenge was hand stamina. Even for an action game I didn't find it engaging. I've never been a fan of button mashers.
 
No. It's an excellent game that was released complete without microtransactions or other BS. If you get everything in it, it's understandable that you'd want to move on. Still a fantastic game,
I'd say it had excellent characters, polish and cinematic flair. As a whole game package, it was a good game. As an RPG it was trash.
 
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