Final Fantasy 16 in the test: The role-playing game beacon is great – for action fans
Hardly any series has changed as frequently and radically as Final Fantasy. But the (still) PS5-exclusive Part 16 takes it to the extreme, with all the pros and cons.
Almost seven years after the release of its predecessor, the latest installment in the Final Fantasy series comes to PlayStation 5 on June 22nd. To ensure the game would be a success, Square Enix handed over the development of Final Fantasy 16 to the Producer Naoki Yoshida.
He and his team saved the initially failed MMO Final Fantasy 14 from disaster and made it a success. In order to make FF16 a first-class role-playing game as well, the developers rely on a fast-paced action-combat system, spectacular esper fights and a dark story full of intrigue, betrayal and violence that is strikingly reminiscent of Game of Thrones more than once.
Even the first trailers showed that the game has a dark and brutal atmosphere. At the same time, the developers repeatedly emphasized that the role-playing game should be suitable for both veterans and newcomers to the series.
In our test, we’ll tell you whether FF16 has met the high standards, what the development team is doing right and where there are points of criticism
A story of contrasts
With Final Fantasy 16 one of the biggest role-playing games of the year appears, which together with the “New Game Plus” mode will keep you busy for over 100 hours. The focus is clearly on the excellent action-combat system and the story full of twists and turns, which apart from a few dialogues is completely set to music and is told in beautiful to stunningly beautiful cutscenes.
Final Fantasy 16: 9 tips we wish we knew before we started the game for the first time
Read more: Final Fantasy 16 in the test: The role-playing game beacon is great – for action fansThe world of FF16, Valisthea, is blessed by mother crystals that donate the land’s vital Aether and enable the use of magic. The nations of Valisthea have always fought wars for possession of these crystals, but now the conflict is more bitter than ever.
With the spread of the blight that is draining life from the land, people cling to their mother crystals even more desperately.
The Mother Crystals and Magic Mining
The mother crystals are as big as mountains. Its depths are mined for smaller crystals that allow the use of magic
In this world of political intrigue, protagonist Clive Rosfield must fight to survive while searching for the mysterious cause of his family tragedy.
Although Clive is primarily driven by revenge, he is characterized early in the game as a normally kind-hearted young man who wants to protect those around him. His helpfulness and charity are maintained throughout the game, making Clive a likeable protagonist.
Uncompromising Storytelling in FF16
In the first few hours of FF16 it becomes clear: the role-playing game makes no compromises when it comes to the story. Combat is portrayed without embellishments with full use of blood and brutality. The characters don’t mince words. And – very unusual for a Japanese RPG – there are even nude scenes, which seem rather awkward.
Darker Tone and Realism in FF16
In general, the game initially seems to be a lot darker than its Final Fantasy predecessors. Some scenes seem like they came straight out of Game of Thrones. Compared to other role-playing games from Japan like Tales of Arise or Fire Emblem, the game looks more western, which is particularly evident in the characters and the dialogues.
Contrast And Balance In FF16’S Narrative
For example, there is no trace of overexcited characters or small children as group members. The humor of FF16 is rather sarcastic and slapstick jokes are mostly avoided. It’s more similar in style to games like Final Fantasy Tactics or FF12.
Emotional Depth and Expressiveness of Characters
However, FF16 uses its gloom to create contrast, not to appear “pseudo-adult” to Kramp. The dark moments are always followed by heartwarming and lighthearted scenes, providing a strong counterbalance to the dark sections. Characters openly show their feelings and tears flow.
Even if FF16 seems dark, there are many heartfelt moments and conversations between Clive and his friends.
The kindness and compassion is contrasted with the brutality, followed by a sense of relief when a dire situation ends positively. In addition to the political intrigues, it was above all these contrasts that made the story of FF16 exciting for me.
However, the game doesn’t always take enough time to further develop some important and interesting characters. Their motivations and backgrounds remain a mystery until the end or are mentioned only in passing.
Other secondary characters, on the other hand, receive miserably long quest lines that quickly lose their charm. Also, some story questions remain unanswered until the end or are only mentioned in passing in the compendium, the game’s lore system.
The Compendium can be accessed at any time during cutscenes by pausing the game and then pressing the touchpad.
The story of FF16 is not only characterized by contrasts in terms of content, but also in terms of quality. On the one hand, there are many really incredibly exciting moments in which the lives of the characters hang in the balance. On the other hand, you are also repeatedly confronted with rather sluggish and strangely unfocused sections that feel more like fetch quests. If you expect the same writing quality in FF16 as in the fantastic demo, you will be slightly disappointed.
But the story is not the only thing that the role-playing game has to offer. On the gameplay level, it shines with a fantastic action-combat system that rivals the best of its genre.
A love marriage of Devil May Cry and Final Fantasy 7: Remake
To achieve his goal, Clive must fight through countless hordes of enemies throughout the story. Final Fantasy 16’s combat system is one of the game’s great pillars, and it does its job damn well. Central to this are the Esper skills that Clive can equip and mix.
In battle, you swing your sword and have access to the abilities of a total of seven different espers, the summons of FF16. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, the Espers are not summoned, instead Clive is allowed to equip their abilities.
For example, you can use Shiva’s Diamond Dust, Bahamut’s Gigaflare, and other Esper abilities as if they were your own.
They deal massive damage and don’t use mana, but have a cooldown. You’ll have to switch between summons as you fight, resulting in a fun rotation of sword combos and esper abilities.
The dodge and block timing is generous and feels really good when executed.
The summons have a strong identity and differ drastically:
- Garuda’s move set is characterized by numerous, extremely fast hits
- Shiva’s abilities mostly have a frost and crowd control effect
- Bahamut handles skill charging and channeled beam attacks
So learning new Esper skills is always a pleasure, because I want to know how they feel in combat and in which situations I can best use them. They are (almost) all extremely useful and feel bulky.
It is also interesting: While some esper skills are responsible for pure damage output, others have special effects. These skills are boosted when triggered at the right time.
A perfect block with Titan’s Frenzied Fists unleashes a flurry of fists on the opponent and also reduces the ability’s cooldown by a third. Other abilities are boosted when used to block a projectile or dodge perfectly.
The only thing that spoiled my joy about the fantastic combat system was the rather meager variety of enemies and especially the bosses. This is where Final Fantasy 16 suffers from the same problem as the 2018 reboot of God of War: far too often the boss is some sort of giant wielding your choice of a mace, axe, or greatsword. While their move sets will change and expand as the game progresses, that doesn’t detract from the growing routine.
Because the fights feel so wonderfully powerful and are staged insanely spectacularly, they remain entertaining even in what feels like the fiftieth giant fight. And it also offers a surprising amount of tactical depth with the Esper abilities.
But it is also clear: Anyone who has a general problem with action-heavy combat systems in role-playing games or even longs for the turn-based era of the time-honored series should only keep one thing from Final Fantasy 16, namely distance.
Felt like in a Godzilla movie
In addition to the normal fights as Clive, there are always particularly bombastic Esper fights in FF16. The Espers are controlled by the so-called Dominants and unleash their full power when the Dominants “awaken”.
For example, Joshua, Clive’s brother, turns into Phoenix, and royal spy Benedikta Harmann turns into Garuda. In the course of the game you take control of an Esper several times in order to fight against one or more others.
I had to think back to the old Godzilla films or »Pacific Rim« while playing. The force of the esper attacks and the collateral damage to cities and the surrounding area really give the impression that two insanely powerful beings are fighting here.
The Espers in FF16 reach massive proportions. They trample entire armies and reduce large areas to rubble. The fights between them are always bombastic
The feeling is reinforced by reference to how the little people are affected. The fight between Shiva and Titan from the demo is a good example of this. The ordinary soldiers on the ground are simply trampled.
After the first demo of Final Fantasy 16, while I was concerned that the esper battles would be a quick time event orgy, those fears were unfounded.
Fortunately, the QTEs proved to be the exception to the rule in the test. You have your own combos after the transformations in combat and learn new skills over time that bring more variety to the visual spectacle.
Combined with the combat system that you use as Clive, it becomes clear how much effort the developers put into this. Even if it feels like it comes at the expense of other features.
Exploration is not rewarded
Because as much love and care the development team put into the combat system, I miss it so much in many places in the design of the world.
Naoki Yoshida, the producer of Final Fantasy 16, compared the game’s world layout to God of War in an interview . I felt more like Tales of Arise while playing . Although there is no central hub there, the layout and structure of the individual areas is similar to Final Fantasy 16.
The world is divided into several large regions, which in turn are made up of smaller areas. They are revealed more and more as the story progresses, but for the most part remain disappointingly empty.
When I play, I have a habit of “walking” to new areas, which means I’ll leisurely search every corner of the map. That turned out to be a waste of time for most of Final Fantasy 16. There is hardly anything interesting to discover. Treasure chests mainly contain crafting materials, useful equipment remains the absolute exception to the rule.
Special places such as an abandoned village or a castle ruin are not interesting on their own, but only become relevant in the side quests. This always gave me the “Oh, that’s what this thing is for” effect when I was sent by an NPC to a location I had already explored.
Dungeons only exist within the story missions. You visit crystal mines, castle vaults and abandoned ruins, but they are all very linear.
Also have to go through a dungeon in one piece to the end once you have entered it. You can go back out in most cases, but your dungeon progress will be reset and you’ll have to start over.
Areas and dungeons that you will visit on your journey still look impressive and stylistically beautiful.
All in all, the world of Valisthea is beautiful, but feels unused. Side quests give her a certain depth through her stories, but those who go on a discovery tour without her will be disappointed.
The world from the lore perspective would give a hell of a lot. It feels real, has a long history, traditions, religions, even proverbs and songs. The characters seem convincing and like real inhabitants of this world.
The completely natural use of magic in everyday life, such as drying laundry with wind or freezing fresh fish with ice, is the icing on the cake. So the world has done a great job on the story level, but it’s missing on the gameplay level.
Minor performance issues While I didn't encounter a single bug or glitch while playing in FF16, there were always performance drops that were especially noticeable during packed battles. The FPS rarely came close to 60 in performance mode, but this was never really at the expense of playability and is therefore not relevant to our rating. The developers also promised to address these issues with the Day 1 patch.
After the game is before the game
When it comes to optional content, Final Fantasy 16 doesn’t reinvent the wheel. There are the classic side quests that follow the pattern of “get that, talk to him, assassinate them over there”. Even the main quests suffer from this problem in places and often seem very simple mechanically, with little depth.
Narrative Focus and Dubbed Side Quests
Instead, the developers have focused on the narratives. All side quests are dubbed and tell stories about the world of FF16, its characters and the situations they find themselves in. As a side quest hater, I was initially put off by the simple gameplay, but over time the stories drew me in more and more.
Arcade Mode and High Score Challenges
In Arcade mode, you can replay certain sections of the game and aim for a high score. After the release there will be a worldwide ranking system for the best combo pros
Genuine Disgust and Heartwarming Moments
Especially emotional moments, which, like the main story, revolve around cruelty and goodness, often got under the skin. While I felt genuine disgust towards the NPCs on one quest, another brought a smile to my face.
But the quests stand and fall with the characters and themes they deal with. If both are not particularly interesting, it can quickly happen that a quest is just annoying.
For those who (like me) can’t get enough of the combat system, there are numerous side activities that are decoupled from the story:
- Hunt for rare and powerful monsters, similar to Final Fantasy 12
- Special Challenges in which only certain skills of an Esper are allowed
- Arcade mode in which you replay missions and use combos to try to set a high score
- A New Game Plus mode with higher difficulty, max level 100, new challenges and forge features. You keep your equipment and all Esper skills.
For those who want to delve into the intricacies of the combat system and challenge themselves, this is a fantastic way to easily sink over 80 hours along with the main story and side quests. The additional content of New Game Plus should easily double the number of hours.
Conclusion:
Editor’s conclusion
In Final Fantasy 16 I had high hopes in advance – and at the same time I was very worried about it. Because I’ve been observing the work of the developers under Naoki Yoshida on FF14 for over ten years and I know their strengths and weaknesses. In the end, both my hopes and my worries came true.
Immersive Action and Spectacular Combat System
Is Final Fantasy 16 for someone who just wants an immersive action game? Definitive. The combat system is a jewel of the genre in my opinion and Devil May Cry developer Ryota Suzuki shows all his skills with it. The animations are spectacular, the attacks are powerful, and the block and dodge timings are well balanced.
Not an Old-School Final Fantasy Experience
Is it an old-school Final Fantasy smash? It wasn’t enough for me. It’s not FF6, it’s not FF9, it’s also not FF14: Shadowbringers, which touched me emotionally on a completely different level.
Final Fantasy 16 gets too tangled up in analogies, treats important characters very neglectfully and leaves questions unanswered. Given the composition of the development team and their experience, I really expected more here.
Entertaining and Well-Written with Enjoyable Dialogues
Did I still feel entertained and had a lot of fun? Yes, in any case. Final Fantasy 16 is well written, the dialogues between the characters convinced me from the first minute and gave me a lot of pleasure. The esper mechanics are also a nice evolution of traditional FF summons, which I’d like to see in other Final Fantasy titles as well.
A Journey with Ups and Downs
Final Fantasy 16 is a journey with all its ups and downs. We both didn’t always go to the same destination, but looking back, the trip was more than worth it for me.
What. For. A. Ride! Sometimes there are those evenings when I don’t want to think too much after a hard day’s work. I just want everything around me to explode – as loudly and as spectacularly as possible! Final Fantasy 16 is made for such evenings. It’s hard to describe the audiovisual fireworks that Square Enix puts on here, you have to experience it.
Two important buts:
- You will only have fun with Final Fantasy 16 if you’re in the mood for action-packed grimaces! The combat system feels great and offers some tactical tweaks, but at its core it’s just as much about combos and timing as it is in a Devil May Cry or God of War.
- Final Fantasy 16 cleverly disguises itself as a modern role-playing game with a Western look, but apart from the combat system it is a very Japanese title with traditional peculiarities. The character system is as deep as my bathtub, the quest design as innovative as a new AC/DC album, the world as empty and static as a small town pedestrian street at midnight.
That doesn’t make Final Fantasy 16 a bad game, on the contrary! Because I have never experienced Japanese role-playing traditions in this production quality. And in a roller coaster, it doesn’t bother me that it runs on rails. You should just know what you’re letting yourself in for.
RATING FOR PLAYSTATION 5
“Opulently presented action role-playing game, which thinks the action part very uncompromisingly – for some series fans certainly too uncompromising.”
