Final Fantasy XVI Anniversary Review

Happy first birthday Clive Rosfield 🥳

already a year old? daaaamn

pretty spot-on review, and relatable for me. U def. hit the mark when saying that this entry set the bar to such a high degree when it comes to visual spectacle, ie. the boss battles. yea, wasnt the best when it came to interactive party design.. was really hoping for something liek 7remake series version of party integration, and like u said, could really see that becoming the standard moving forward in these kinda games. I personally like the move into more of the 'action focused' RPG, but I do understand the devotion and nostalgia for the turn-based style and def think FF can succeed in both arenas after understanding more of the depth of the combat, after thinking it was very 1 dimensional and basically just waiting for skills to come off cooldown, after seeing some of the combo mad depictions of how epic and variant combo can be; def changed my mind with the very diverse combos and crazy fun u can have styling on mobs.

They should go for a sequel while ironing all the bits. Deep combat system, awesome eikon battles, focus on pacing and introduce mini games to add variety and keep people hooked.

I loved it, the combat and eikon fights were on the god of war level. And i believe the summons were done justice. Summons are such awesome monsters but never felt colossal or dangerous. But xvi was peak

Personally, I loved the XVI Story, Jill especially was a character who I really enjoyed. I do completely agree with the combat, it was fun, however when I compared it to Remake and Rebirth either side of it, I felt it was lacking a little bit. Overall, I have it up there with VII/IX for my top 3 games in the heavy roster though. I do hope combat wise they use the VIIR games as the template though, I do suspect they will always be a slight variation as they used to do with the turn based titles. I'd also love to see the option of 2nd/3rd player being able to control the other party members as a trial to see how that works, trying to tactically plan your moves together could be interesting. Back to XVI though, I do think it was a brilliant game overall, definitely felt like a full blown epic with the cinematics and music too. Some of which brought back that feeling of the cinematic chase into Lindblum on IX, which I feel was very hard to repeat.

Rebirth ended up being everything I wanted from 16. 16 was still good, but it definitely feels like "the other final fantasy" while they focused most of their resources into Rebirth. There were a lot of limitations especially with the exploration and incentives. No good loot in the world and nothing outside of pretty vistas to gawk at. No alternate characters to play even though we get the short segment with Joshua at the start. Gorgeous game with incredible talented acting and it had a cool ending but ultimately it wasn't anything like what I was expecting.

I did like the Eikon fights though I did get a bit annoyed with them sometimes with how damage spongie they were to the point it felt like the fights would drag sometimes. Other than that and the party members being unplayable, those are the only real negatives I have for it. It’s honestly up there as one of my favorite Final Fantasy games now, which is saying something considering it’s my favorite game series.

Btw i play such games with quality mode with my tv's interpolation to mimic 60 fps turned on and input lag is not that big and game really looks simmilar to 60 fps

16 solidified to me that final fantasy as a brand needs to utilize branching spin-offs like what atlus is doing with smt series. if 16, tactics, tactics ogre are piled together to a spin-off series, it would make much more sense. it would also alleviate the biggest concerns it received such as not being rpg enough and having no party members. it could pull out its own thing because it is its own spin-off series. 7 by itself has become a spin-off series by itself; audiences, whether they actively noticed it or not, knows that 7 has a bunch of games and media attached to it and almost akin to a spin-off series. dissidia is another spin-off branched series and before square enix passed that series to a third party developer, the two first entries were perfect. whatever the marketing team told the public, i have always seen the kingdom hearts series as a final fantasy spin-off branch. then they could also make a spin-off branched dedicated to classic final fantasy ala fantasia. they should really rethink and retry their original thought process for "fabula nova crystallis". the problem with that was not the idea itself but their execution of it. if 13 landed better, and better i mean 7r and 16 levels of better, it could have worked. heck, if they continued the original vision of versus 13 and not rebrand it as 15, id even dare say that it could have saved the entire "fabula nova crystallis" spin-off branched series. their statement that "final fantasy is a big, grand adventure that pushes tech to its limit" could always be justified by reserving the main line numbered to that, a game that has the biggest budget, bigger than life entry with the bearing of the "grand" final fantasy brand. they really just have to admit that final fantasy as a brand and franchise has become too big, out of control, that they have to swallow their ego and lower their pride for it

I just don't get how we can teach 10 yo proper review structure yet every YouTuber seems to put spoilers into their "reviews". Retrospective or analysis isn't a review. A reviews discloses the core premise and or inciting factor. There shouldn't be any need of spoiler warnings. But the warning is appreciated. As were the time stamps. Saw FF16 cheap second hand so might pop over town to pick it up but don't want to be spoiled by reviews. Vent over. (Edited for typo/clarity)

I enjoyed this game so much but im glad that i dodged most of side quests. I did most important though. I skipped cuz i noticed how low quality side quests are.