Final Fantasy 16

In-depth breakdown of mechaniques:


No commentary gameplay:






Shaping up to have a solid system. The stuff I am not sold on the game are the Stagger mechanique and the Summon vs Summon fights.

Looks pretty good, but it has cooldowns(barf) and those summon battles sound like they’ll suck on replays(hopefully they’re not terrible the first time like Bayo 3).

Have they mentioned a demo? I’m assuming there will be one since Square Enix seems to do one for all of their games now.

Looks unoriginal. I have little interest.

>stagger
No.

>kaiju
Fuck no.

I love how a PS5 exclusive with its god-tier SSD still needs those fake uncharted loading screens where you lift a door, now with dualsense gimmicks.

Quick and dirty transition from Ryota Suzuki. Nero combat mechanics with RG, Trickster & Devil Bringer styles. Other weapons outside of swords unknown.

Staggers vary from small amounts (<20% HP) to major damage, but on average seem underwhelming in terms of how much damage you can do during the stagger period. Enemies seem quite spongy in general. I always say a good boss fight lasts no more than 5 mins. Bird lady was 10, and they skip ahead at some points. Lots of cutscenes & QTEs break up the fights, making them feel much longer. You tell me if it's worth seeing a dog 619 a woman's face.

The player saves their supers and limit breaks for a stagger, but nothing stops you using LB sooner, spamming supers, letting them cool down and building up LB. Supers get iframes, auto-parry, and even freeze time. You can't "break" enemies or alter their moveset. Would love to clip that bird chick's wings. You can target Garuda's face or body, but not her limbs.

Summon fight was especially cutscene-heavy. They even put a notice saying the rest won't be like that. Going back to Ryota, controls remind me of Sin DT. Blocking Garuda's fireball with your own is cool. 10 million people bought FF15. 10m held down a button to attack. This is gonna be the 1st ARPG/action game for millions. Wonder how many will stick around afterwards? What even is action anymore?

Besides that, excellent presentation. Loved the HUD & how damage is shown. Could tell which buttons do what before seeing DevilNeverCry's video. Lighting is mostly good. Bit weird on Ramuh summon. Object motion blur a little weird. Character models are good closeup (LOD 0), but also look very PS4.5. Dynamic music was nice, but no tracks stood out for me.

Off-topic, never heard a FF character say “fuck” before (Stranger of Paradise doesn’t count.) Is this going to be like Laughing Octopus in MGS4? They say it once (it’s all so fucking hysterical), then the next game is just F bombs everywhere? Aeris was already cussing in FF7R. Is she going to cuss when she

spoiler for game older than some board members:

in part 2?

>Darker, more mature narrative

Complete kayfabe. MC is reluctant to kill, has a demon inside of him, has to be stopped by an older mentor he'll probably accidentally kill later, is on a quest to avenge his brother, has an action pet/mascot and is the "branded" chosen one who's looked down on, despite having multiple elements that no-one's shown to be able to replicate, and literally beating an enemy because he was "fighting for what be believed in". It couldn't be any more shonen if it tried.

Forgot to mention, dog and human NPCs don't really do much. When you're not barking orders (no sign whether you can command humans), they throw an attack every now and then to look busy. Does little damage outside of cutscenes and QTEs.

Those stats are a bummer. I was hoping for it to be a character action when i heard DMC5 combat director was working on this game. Hopefully its not an open world game too.

The sword slashes & pummel sound weak in the fight against the woman. Maybe when playing the game this is a non-issue.

Would have also liked if you could control the summons during normal gameplay instead of just scripted sections.

I wish the developers would come up with more interesting ways to do magic. Except Okami, I haven't liked magic in any game . It always ends up feeling like alternate way of shooting or worse boring.

>literally beating an enemy because he was "fighting for what be believed in".
Why doesn't it work the other way around ? It always holds only true for the hero.

> magic
Fair point, I'm thinking about a game where magic was more than just that and I'm coming up pretty much with nothing outside of magic in tabletop games. For example 'warp-magic' in Warhammer pen&paper games are pretty interesting, as you're basically constantly vying for control against the daemonic forces you use. Overcharge and you risk death, corruption, possesion or worse, with unique permanent interactions. It's stuff that's nearly impossible to do in a videogame.

Maybe the 'magic' in the Force Unleashed? Though that was more just gravity antics.

Magic, in most games I've played, is really no more than throwing colored lights that do damage.

To be fair, magic makes sense in this context. We DMChads know an E&I substitute when we see one. Wouldn't be surprised by a magic Coyote A substitute for stunning as well. I think the player is focusing more on demonstrating weapons than styling, hence spamming magic. Why else would they use wind powers against wind enemies? In practice, magic will just be a weak hitscan weapon to stop the (sadly missing) combo counter resetting.

>your reward for hitting the enemies a bunch of times is a stun that lets you hit them a bunch of times
They hired Nero's designer alright.

Malcar wrote:>your reward for hitting the enemies a bunch of times is a stun that lets you hit them a bunch of times
They hired Nero's designer alright.

OOOOEF

I hope I'm wrong but this game looks like every other action JRPG with numbers flying everywhere and tank enemies.

It looks exactly as Malcar said. This is why I didn't like FF7R or these stun/break mechanics in general.

I only saw DevilNeverCry's video and it looks solid but generic. Everything I saw I've already seen elsewhere. If you don't have some kind of selling point for your combat system then it will live or die based on the enemy design, and from what I've seen it doesn't seem that great either. I'm sure the game will be decent, but I don't know if it will be any more than that.

>magic is no more than throwing colored lights that do damage in most games
Which games do you feel that did magic 'right'? Or better yet, what would you call 'good' magic? Always saw KH's as good. Sure, elemental magic is just damage, but in KH1 they work differently from each other, and in KH2 they even have different properties. GoW's is a bit more simpler, though the one that tends to get the most use from me is MG/EH (which is more of a status effect inducing magic than something that just does damage, either safely, enabling half collisions, etc).

>hope you're wrong
I feel like in 100% of the cases where I said this, I always ended up being correct (which was obviously a disappointment, but should have seen it coming, nonetheless).

>which did magic right
Not even sure what is right.

If it's just elemental crap that doesn't do anything but damage, then it kinda sucks. Yeah that's mainly elemental stuff.
I'd say good magic can do something else like causing a status effect. Like fire causing burning.

In that case, I wonder if you'd like the magic in the KH handhelds better (even if I'm not a huge fan of how they're used). I don't really recall which one did it (or if it was both), but in either 358/2 Days and/or Re:CoM, you could freeze enemies with Blizzard spells. If you attacked said frozen enemy, they would receive x4 the normal damage, so your best bet was to hit it with your strongest single-hit attack available to you. Burn was caused by Fire, and it acted like Poison (damage over time). Not sure what Shock did, but it existed.

Also, for what it's worth, elemental magic in KH2 *does* cause elemental related statuses... though that only applied to a particular enemy type (and two bosses of that kind).

Other than that, magic in KH1/2 just offers offensive utility (other than the damage they do). As far as statuses go, though, they're lacking in that aspect outside the noted scenarios.

Anyway, since I'm still not knowledgeable enough about Action, mind telling me a few games where (elemental or not) magic operates like you say?

I was mainly referring to turn based like FF.

But action rpgs do it too. Though I've forgotten which.

>turn based
You got me there. The only other turn based series I can think of where elemental attacks have a chance to inflict elemental statuses is Pokemon.

>Action RPGs with palette swapped magic
Digimon World 4 is undoubtedly like this.

How's the magic in Dragon's Dogma? I always see it brough up when people talk about good magic systems.

It's pretty good.

Fire spells set enemies on fire. Even better if you threw oil first.
Ice freezes and can be used as a platform, tornado sends enemies flying, lighning does more damage to wet enemies, chain to others and stun, status spells like Miasma which creates a dome of mist that poisons and slows.

I didn't find the magic in Dragon's dogma too interesting despite some visually cool looking abilities. I tried it for a while and found it boring since the enemies were designed with melee character in mind so that's what i reverted back to.

What sets Okami apart for me is that it wouldn't work as a shooter. You just exist and things happen. No fancy animations or chant anything like that. I guess its the controls that make sense to my brain. Not unlike how 360 input results in some type of spinning attack in action games.

>Dragon's Dogma
Sounds interesting from what you're describing. Game is already on the list (for a long time now).

>Okami
Also on the list. Though I'll end up playing that first before DD (have no means to play the latter at present).

>magic not too interesting
That's why there's other classes and builds. I found the sorcerer class super fun.

>enemies are designed for melee
They are?

>Sounds interesting from what you're describing.
It really is. I love the ranger too. Spent like 300 hours on each of these classes.

>Okami
What will you play it on?

>it really is
Coming from you, that's some high praise.

>what will I play it on
PlayStation 2 version (emulated). I tested it a few weeks ago, and unlike last time, it was running perfectly. Heard there were unskippable cutscenes, so frame skipping should come in handy here.

After being done with FFX and some other RPG (undecided on which one), there's a 1/6 chance of playing Okami next (same for Chaos Legion, by the way).

>They are?

Some enemies can be grabbed, some can have body parts that can be cut off and the moment to moment interactions with enemies are much more enjoyable with melee character. Chimera my favorite enemy is pretty boring as a magic character, same issue with a lot of climbable enemies with weak points. As a magic character you are shooting from a distance or waiting for ability to charge which can annihilate enemies in one move.

>In that case, I wonder if you'd like the magic in the KH handhelds better (even if I'm not a huge fan of how they're used). I don't really recall which one did it (or if it was both), but in either 358/2 Days and/or Re:CoM, you could freeze enemies with Blizzard spells. If you attacked said frozen enemy, they would receive x4 the normal damage, so your best bet was to hit it with your strongest single-hit attack available to you. Burn was caused by Fire, and it acted like Poison (damage over time). Not sure what Shock did, but it existed.

Shock/Jolt was actually pretty interesting. If you inflicted an enemy with it/got inflicted yourself, the target will take 10% damage off of total HP and stagger if they come in contact with an enemy, a wall or environmental object, or even an ally. In Recoded, this becomes pretty fun to use since you get Keyblades such as Lady Luck and Olympia that can inflict Jolt if you guard or attack against enemies.

Days I feel actually had a very interesting magic system with how each tier of magic had its own own unique effect. Fire is a good early game projectile and remains useful for having decent tracking. Fira is a strong, fast projectile that can pierce enemies and is great for stationary targets. Firaga isn't as useful due to the short range, but is an AoE on hit and has decent power. Blizzard is decidely not great due to how slow it is, but has some use early on and can hit pass through a target multiple times. Blizzara is incredible, consistently inflicting Freeze, giving you reliable crowd control and a damage boost as frozen enemies take somewhere around 2x to 3x damage, can't remember exactly. Blizzaga is more situational, as it's a mine that can be placed anywhere and as such requires a bit more thought, but also has a decent Freeze chance.

Thunder is quite good, and deals ridiculous damage when used on enemies near walls or corners, and can even shred bosses. Thundara is more of a crowd control tool, and Thundaga is just good burst damage. The Aero spells are a little weird, since they're mostly focused on inflicting Air-toss, but you can't take advantage of it too often because of how high enemies get sent by it. It's still decent crowd control and two of them track enemies, while Aeroga draws in enemies and on top of that, Air-toss does increased damage towards enemies in the air. The Cure spells are pretty straightforward, with Cure doing instant heal and Cura doing regen overtime and Curaga was obviously designed for multiplayer, with it having you summon a magic circle to stand in and heal you/allies overtime. This is all without mentioning that many enemies have elemental weaknesses, so even if the spell isn't that great, you'll get use out of it to stagger enemies or kill them faster.

>Some enemies can be grabbed, some can have body parts that can be cut off
Those body parts can be removed by any type of attack, they merely take extra damage from slashing attacks. There's a spell called Grapnel which grabs enemies at range. On small enemies this is equivalent to a melee grapple, but uniquely Grapnel can also grab large enemies like chimeras. Elemental damage can also cause various effects not available from physical damage, such as freezing enemies or burning the wings of flying creatures.

>As a magic character you are shooting from a distance
There are aura spells such as Blearing or Spellscreen which provide strong effects in a small area around the caster. Brontide is a powerful lightning whip used at close range. For more traditional down-and-dirty fighting, the mystic knight and magick archer each have fast-charging spells designed for melee combat.

Looks like Rorc beat me to it.

What you're really saying Memes is you have a preferred class or fighting style.

Magic and bows aren't boring to me. Swordfighting is.

>As a magic character you are shooting from a distance or waiting for ability to charge which can annihilate enemies in one move.
I play a debilitation sorcerer though.

>Those body parts can be removed by any type of attack,

You remove by shooting them right ? I don't remember much. Also didn't experiment much with magic so maybe i missed something.

>but uniquely Grapnel can also grab large enemies like chimeras

You stand and use ability from a distance right ?

This was my issue. As a melee character I have to go near the enemy , choose where to grab and climb, the enemy would try to shake me off or in the case of griffin or dragon would hover in the air. This was unique and interesting as i don't know many games that do this. Castlevania Lords of shadow comes to mind. I didn't get this type of engagement from a magic character.

>you have a preferred class or fighting style.

Could be. I forgot about bows. My endgame class was Assassin so i guess i liked Dante's playstyle. I still think Magic lacks the dynamism that melee character have and the magic controls didn't make the option enticing either.

>games with climbing
The Monster Hunter series is probably the main one. Shadow of the Colossus.

>didn't make the option enticing either.
That's why classes are great. Something for everyone.
My brother doesn't like bows or spells and wants to get in there with swords.

>magic in Days
Yeah I remember each tier was pretty different. Now that you mention it, I also recall that Thunder did extra damage to enemies if you could get them against a wall, since the bolts basically kept raining down in a straight line until they hit a wall, so if you used it near one, it meant that all the bolts would all rain down in one place, dealing extra damage in the process. Fun, if finicky to get working.

While I do remember the basic functionality of each spell, I don't recall how it all worked in the grand scheme of things when compared to your other tools. Or maybe the thing I didn't like was how they worked (they behaved more like items in terms of how each spell was used). Don't remember how Roxas' upgrade system worked, but I think it was partly the reason as for why you could only 'carry' a limited amount of spells (and proper items to replenish those spells), which was shared with mobility options like Jump, Glide, the keyblade you were using (and its upgrades), among other things.

More exploration and combat showcase.

More gameplay presentation.

I'm still not sure if this is either a) the sickest shit I've ever seen in my life and I can't wait to play it b) the dullest modern piece of highbudget shovelware that I dearly need to skip.

I've got no interest. Like yeah it could be decent but it looks awful.

Final previews are out:

>Bighorn fight
How long can you fight one dumb cow?

>cooldowns
*sigh* exciting.

>wolves fight
They seem so passive that the fight might aswell be turn based.

>elemental weaknesses
Hope it won't have colour-coded enemies.

>elements from other action games
don't remember action genre just being DMC.

>summon and stance mechanics
Something unique or just style system?

Pretty much as expected, FF with DMC combat slapped on top of it, might be decent, but nothing outstanding. RPGs and Action games are not a good mix. They run contrary to each other and rpg elements destroy any balance very easily.

Paul Allen's profile wrote:RPGs and Action games are not a good mix. They run contrary to each other and rpg elements destroy any balance very easily.

I’d say it depends on the game. The KH, TWEWY, and best Tales games handle action and RPG elements pretty well in tandem with one another.

It works godawfully with raggy the rpg mix. Don’t need I need to explain why. Just look into my guides and tips at the page there and keep in mind it goes out the shitter with the rpg mechanics. Still love the game.

Seeing this footage is so bizarre to me. I homes in on all the flashyness for me so far, but mechanically speaking there's a way too big emphasis on single target hyper-armor toughguys with no real interaction beyond "do numbers on his numbers". The game does seem to be extremely customizable, from hard modes to "basically plays the game for you", which is interesting.

> RPG action don't mix
I was in the same camp until I played KH1 and 3, and after that I just got even more angry that the entire subgenre was perfected nearly 20 years ago by a big name studio and NOBODY took notes.

>RPG elements
It's thin balance overall. It's the question how much combat is ruled by stats. It can always lead into situation where pure numbers outweigh any smart tactics or result in underpower character if you ignore rpg elements. The more variables there are the harder it is to balance it, so something eventually will break the game. It's best to limit in some capacity rpg elements in games with action imo.

>Mixture
I see those genres as opposites. In RPGs fights are dictated by number and stats are representations of characters' strengths. Decisions in fights are taken with consideration of said characters' strengths, so the efficient way is to min-max in some capacity for the best results. Whereas in action games, it's the player who's in the control of the character and it's skill that dictates the pace of a battle, not the dice rolls, not the numbers.

In the end, I feel like it take away some focus from the action. You're figthing engaging and exciting battle with foes, but then you have to stop to manage stats and equipment. It's varies from a game to game ofc. In Nioh it was most evident where it felt like I played two games at once - action game and loot management simulator.

>KH games
Sadly, they've eluded me.

I was going to say that MonHun also does ARPG gameplay well, but thinking about it more I still have to decide if the game is good because of the RPG elements or in spite of them.

>FFXVI
Saw the miniboss clip on Twitter but honestly it doesn't look that bad aside from the stagger mechanic, which was trash in DMC (for the bosses that had it) and will be trash here. Getting rewarded with a big opening after hitting an enemy that is always open is boring.

I'll mostly use KH1 as an example, but the brilliance of the system is that damage-values aren't really that tied to your level or stats. You can level up, sure, and you get some bonus damage. But most of the RPG elements relate to using the correct tool and build at the correct time. Your build is determined by the sword and ring you have equipped, which give you specific bonusses which are quite simple. +magic gives you more damage from magic, while also giving you more mana. +vit is more health, and some swords deal more damage or give specific damage boosts. You can always swap these around, so you're never stuck in a build and can experiment at will.

The same goes for skills, you have 'points' and each skill has a value, if you have 30 points, and for example parry costs 5, then you have 25 points left. And you can enable and disable these skills, again, at will.

It's very customizable and open ended, some bosses can be completely negated by being 'smart' in a sense (generate a good build that completely circumvents their mechanics). In other cases you can equip a lot of +magic gear and go ham with fire-spells on a fire-weak boss. It's little things like this that make it shine. Meanwhile the action-part can circumvent things that you can normally do through RPG elements, but by doing them by pure mobility/avoidance etc. you open up more avenues in your skilllist or build.

It's such a beautiful system, it makes you scratch your head just what designers have been smoking the last 20 years. Really recommend playing KH1 if you can.

Do numbers on super armor enemy.
Enemy sits down.
Do even more numbers.
Repeat as long as you can stand it.

>Raeng
Sounds interesting, I'll keep an eye out for occasion to get them, since they're all on pc now, but with me being easily distracted I might play them in like next week or after a 2 years lol.

Just give it a while. I have to admit KH1 didn't click with me initially, and it's quite a slow start (more of an adventure game that's hard to find out where to go). But once the mechanics click, oh boy, it clicks.

>adventure game that's hard to find out where to go
I played Morrowind where questgivers give you directions based on some vague navigation points in this huge, barren wasteland and I think they sometime give you wrong ones to fuck with you lol. I think I can manage it in KH, might even be enjoyable.

What I think will be bigger barrier for me, personally, is kiddie aesthetic. Maybe it's acquired taste, in the worst case scenerio I can skip cutscenes if they don't tell you anything releated to gameplay in them.

The game is pretty classy in terms of artstyle, with a pretty eh...dark turn later. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.

>Kh1
Played some of it, got lost on level 1 and skipped to 2. Got over halfway in 2 and got to the 2nd visits to the beauty and the beast castle and wanted to shoot myself. It was so confusing that section for me for some reason. I also forgot to upgrade drive abilities and was pretty much doing a lvl1 run if the game on the max difficulty haha. I was thinking of doing a fresh playthrough of it but my god the opening is ASS. I have no idea why some action games players defend it and throw shame at other games that have a slow ass opening. Aka tgbs.

>Raeng
>KH
After all these years, it's pretty surreal to see you talking about that series. I still remember when I asked you if you had played these 4 years ago.

Note: Recently I learned that a member from KH1/KH2's combat team worked on Lightning Returns. Which explains quite a few things (such as why SBK and I are pleased to see much of what it offers, one of them being dual spells, which is reminiscent of how KH2 mixed an element with a physical portion via Master/Final Form).

Though this is also saddening in the sense that, while LR does seem quite great, it would have meant that we were robbed of an opportunity to see the (perhaps) best of the original KH team when they were at their peak (when Final Fantasy Versus XIII was cancelled, and got turned into FFXV, which was handled by another team).

>Paul
Definitely give the games a try. The RPG mechanics aren't intrusive to the Action part. 2 in particular feels like a straight Action game at Lv 1 (you can still kill things reasonably fast even when facing a Lv 99 opponent *we're talking about 3 minutes or perhaps less here, if you know what you're doing, which is pretty standard for an Action boss*). As noted, no need to be at Lv 99 to face a Lv 99 opponent.

Haven't played KH3 to comment. And Raeng's explanation on KH1 is pretty accurate (what I would add is that it handles HP% damage beautifully).

>KH2's opening
While certainly slow, the Nobody boss is still well designed around your limited kit. It's basically one out of a handful of reasons why I like the opening to a degree.

> me praising KH
I'm still an alternative guy by praising 1 and 3 instead of 2, so there's that :p

> KH2 intro
You can just make a seperate save file after you beat the prologue and always load that one when you start a new game.