The recent string of low-quality releases from modern game companies boggles the mind as making a relatively good game should not showcase much difficulty. While fantastic games like Octopath Traveler II and Hi-Fi Rush were released this year, titles with broken and boring gameplay like Forspoken, Redfall and Gollum have appeared too often. Thankfully, Square-Enix managed to go against this trend and produce a fantastic new inclusion into their flagship series, Final Fantasy! This 16th entry into the franchise utilizes the power of current-gen hardware to deliver an experience that looks and plays great, albeit with a few minor issues resulting from the developer’s focus on spectacle.
Final Fantasy XVI feels like a true next-gen title due to its graphical prowess. Everything feels vibrant with the utilization of the game’s various visual effects as magic spells shine with wondrous splendor and environments feel intricate and alive. However, the game might relish in detail too much as fights and duels feel overly gruesome with realistic blood splatters, blood-stained weapons and similar phenomena. While impressively realistic, this excessive gore is far from necessary.
Additionally, the performance suffers from a mild hiccup due to its graphics. Transitions from cutscenes to gameplay are mildly noticeable when the game prioritizes graphical fidelity and are downright jarring when the game focuses on achieving a consistent sixty frames per second (FPS) as the cutscenes can suddenly switch back to thirty FPS. Spider-Man: Miles Morales also provided settings that let the console direct its resources to either graphics or framerate, but any cutscene/gameplay transition issues—if they existed in the first place—were handled well enough that one will not usually notice them. Seeing these issues present in a game three years older than a different title that dealt with them appropriately feels odd.
Thankfully, the core of the gameplay mechanics showcases a similarly brilliant level of quality. Intriguingly enough, Final Fantasy XVI forgoes expanding on the gameplay of Final Fantasy XV and opts for gameplay strikingly similar to the Devil May Cry (DMC) series. Combat focuses on stylishly chaining together attacks, magic spells, special attacks and other offensive options gained from unlocking abilities in a progression system like DMC but with a fantasy twist and additional features like the ability to order the main character’s dog to attack certain enemies.
The various menus typically seen in an RPG also help encapsulate the stylish feeling of the gameplay by keeping everything streamlined and sleek. One can effortlessly parse through all the menus—including the settings/save game section—quickly and efficiently with a simple yet stylish design that does not clutter the UI with unneeded features. The game even includes 8-bit sprites of all the characters currently in the party to add a bit of charm!
Unfortunately, a few locales come across as decisively linear. The linear design is not inherently harmful—and Final Fantasy XVI’s linear design comes nowhere close to horrendously streamlined games like Final Fantasy XIII—but the number of times the level design felt like nothing more than a bendy hallway felt disappointing. Thankfully, the game does try its best to disguise its linearity with secrets peppered throughout the levels, and a few open world-like areas.
All in all, I give Final Fantasy XVI an 8/10, and I would recommend it but only with a heavy discount off of its current market price of $70.
