Final Fantasy 16

Raeng:
>Dark turn
As in Arsenal Gear moment? Got me curious.

Pheonix:
>Strong recommendation
After you and Raeng wrote so many good things about them, my hand are tied in this matter, I'll definitely give them a shot

>lvl1
Neat, I assume that's challenge run category - are there any other?

On the same note, how is the difficulty? Is it difficult? Or is it better to impose some sort of restraint and not abuse certain moves?

They can be difficult imo, since they play unlike most games so there's quite a learning curve. I'd play KH1 on Normal (it's what I did) first. Do a nice Proud (hard) run afterwards.

> dark turn
More in terms of story and character design. This isn't a kiddy boss:

Raeng:
> Normal on the first playthrough
Okay, so I'll go hard. Want to see if I'll regret it later.

>Boss
Oh, I see they went creative. Always interesting when the boss has something sticking out from below the waist area lol. Like when artists do those freaky designs instead of generic ones.

>Lv 1 is challenge run category
Yep. Though some say it's 'the true highest default difficulty', since you're not really locked out of much stuff (mostly passives) if you do this. If it weren't for the fact that devs outright said that they were surprised people did such runs, most people would have assumed that they designed the game around Lv 1 (since everything just works shockingly well, so you might as well say that it was a lightning in a bottle sort of deal).

>any others
Many. Lv 1 is used for most of those. You can go for 'No Magic', 'No Drives' (though the Cavern of Remembrance becomes an exception, not because of combat, it's due to platforming requiring their use), 'No Summons', 'No Items', 'No Limits'... and the most difficult being 'No Abilities'. You can also mix and match these, though I don't remember if you had to draw the line somewhere.

KH1 doesn't work too well for Lv 1 (only added in the HD re-release on PS3 and newer consoles). The main campaign is doable, but as far as I remember, one of the time trials is impossible. Also, unlike in KH2, you don't get abilities (from combo modifiers to the ability to block attacks *that said, you can still parry attacks if your weapon's hitbox clashes with the hitbox of an enemy attack, but this evidently requires much tighter timing*) via progression, you get them via leveling up. KH1's Lv 1 is also bugged in a way that if you know what to do and don't hold back, you can finish some fights faster than if you were at Lv 100 (as nonsensical as that sounds).

>are they difficult?
On your first go, they can be, even if you're not playing on the highest setting (unless you go out of your way to overlevel *which is to say, deliberately backtracking for hours to get loads of experience, but you can still kill the things that stand in your way*). But once you get the hang of how a few moves (and enemy AI) work, things will become notably easier. Many of them still require some sort of agency, though.

Lategame (in both KH1 and KH2), you get two game breaking abilities that... well, break the game in half. But don't worry, they're just passives, so they can be ignored more easily. They're also gotten via leveling, which is mostly why people say that thing about Lv 1 being the best way to play KH2.

>start on hard right away
KH1's Proud (Hard) is the hardest in the series, and at times (read: rare) it's as difficult as Critical (Very Hard, this one was introduced in 2), but it also depends on whether you go out of your way to overlevel. You can learn the ropes on Normal (Standard), then try Hard next (Proud). KH2's Proud is easier, so you can probably start on that one, then do a Critical run next.

Thanks for heads ups.

Allure of Proud mode is probabaly too hard for me and I'm too stubborn to take easy way by overlvling, so I can see myself having fun with it.

Summons abilities preview

Spoiler:

Boss fight preview

Spoiler:

Dungeon traversal preview

Spoiler:

> KH
One of the biggests things for me was getting used to what type of game it is. Once you don't go too much for combo stuff, but more play it like an RPG i.e. use ice magic against a fire foe, while playing into their specific animations as well, it becomes so much fun.

KH1 imo is best played on Proud but actually playing the game. Level-1 was a late addition that wasn't thought through and unless you use a specific powerup from that mode, it's not fun at all. Basically there's an ability that you gain by equipping the 'no exp' ability, that makes it so that every last hit in your attack combo deals a lot more damage.

Due to an oversight(?) this buff remains UNTIL you attack again. As a result you can legit insta-kill most bosses, as you'll do the 3hit combo, get the buff, and then summon to wreck bosses. You're actually stronger in a sense at level-1 (or at level max, but with the no-exp skill equipped).

> FF16 dungeon
It looks fun, but also strangely...weird. I really can't place it, but it reminds me more of these wacky Korean/Chinese ripoff action games with a ton of flashy animations and sparks and shit but nothing really happening. Areas also look really open to accomodate the combat. Had hoped for more enclosed spaces.

That boss fight was a Sitting Down Simulator.

>thanks for the heads up
Feel free to ask anything when you get around to it.

>becomes much more fun
Indeed. Just wish they had added an option to skip summon cutscenes.

>best played on vanilla Proud
Imagined that being the case. Being stuck with a very basic Sora in terms of moveset (except magic and summons *could've been worse*) doesn't sound too thrilling.

>bug explanation
Yep. Works exactly as you described.

>can also work at level 100
Ah, right. Didn't think of this. Although one can still beat, say, Kurt Zisa in a Lv 1 file with No Exp significantly faster than in a Lv 100 file without said ability.

Note: A side effect of using No Exp is that you get a similar effect of one of the broken passives I mentioned earlier, without actually equipping said passive. It's not nearly as broken at Lv 1 in KH1, since the other thing that makes it busted is not available to you, unless you actually start leveling up, but still. Not sure if it was a good solution to the otherwise guaranteed one shot galore you'd have to endure (the best armor for defense in KH2 could let you tank a couple of hits, so you weren't exactly dying in one hit to everything there).

>XVI
Can't say I'm particularly hyped for this game. Would much rather play CHAOS. Keeping an eye on the second part of VII Remake, even if the KH2 planner isn't working on it anymore (Intergrade made things more 'actiony' than vanilla, so I'm curious to see how they plan on handling things from now). Still, it's probably not a good idea to set myself up to disappointment by expecting much from how Gravity works (wish that it worked like in KH1).

Yeah ironically I had a lot more trouble with the demon boss on my regular run than on lvl1 since Mushu is just so powerful haha.

Demo now out on PS5.

An aproximately 2 hour demo covering the game's prologue, save data can be carried to the final game. After completing the prologue, a special "battle demo" scenario will be unlocked with new abilities unlocked for this scenario, you can't save progress under this "battle demo".

Reviews for the game are out.

88 on Metacritic (97 reviews)

90 on Opencritic (61 reviews)

Saw the ending and it was cool.

Bought this because FF is a special franchise to me and FF7 got me into video games.

I've only put about 8 hours in so my impressions might not mean much but this is the least "Final Fantasy" of any game in the main series. I know this has been said about every title since X, but at least XII had party members, status effects, jobs, etc, XIII was somewhat turn based and similar to VII aesthetically, and XV also had a party and that unique style the series became known for. This is Game of Thrones/Berserk-lite with zero RPG elements and unremarkable action combat.

Normally I would celebrate the removal of RPG elements but for a franchise like this, they really needed to go crazy on the action to make it a worthwhile idea, but they didn't. I truly think Ragnarok has better combat than this game. Enemies have about 500% too much health and the number of tools at your disposal is small, with anything halfway noteworthy being on a cooldown. Enemies are all "wail until the obvious windup and then dodge".

There are no options to tailor certain aspects of your loadout. At least FF7R had weapons with very different upgrade paths with varying materia slots and advantages and disadvantages for different stats. This is as basic as it gets: equip the thing with the highest number.

I'm also very shocked by just how many cutscenes there are in this game. Pretty sure 75% of my playtime has been watching cutscenes.

One boss I fought was me just beating the shit out of it for who knows how long, while dodging a stagnant rotation of its attacks over and over again.

There was clearly an insane amount of money thrown at this game and it all went to the presentation. SE is really banking on this game appealing to the movie game lovers that buy all first party Sony titles. I don't think it's going to work though, and then they'll say the series needs reinvention yet again, and the cycle starts over in a few years...

>raggy has better combat
There are sadly 100 games with ragbarok in the title, I would assume you mean gow? If so, can’t really comment on the matter since I haven’t played this game lol, and am not planning to. The only ps5 title I care about currently(not to suggest others are bad) is raggy really(if you couldn’t tell lol). This game seems like it has pretty spongey enemy’s yeah.

> ragnarok has a better combat system than this game
Holy shit glad I skipped this.

Curious if you agree with the following, as going by what I hear it's what I am seeing the most: the game didn't choose hard enough what it wanted to be. I hear RPG people complaining about the lack of rpg-elements, while the action-crowd complain about the precense of rpg-elements (insane length, cutscenes, sidequests etc). Sounds like they really should've just gone one way or the other instead of half ass it in the middle. Thoughts?

My brother has it and is reporting the same horrors.

When I personally say RPG elements I'm talking status effects and weaknesses.

There's nothing. NOTHING.

The action side looks as barebones as it gets. Another trash stagger game.

Now everyone play good shit like FF12 Zodiac Age and Tactics Ogre.

Speaking of raggy having better combat, that game and IIRC even the 2018 game, have elemental weaknesses, keep in mind the developers took inspiration from those games but instead of implementing stuff like that they took the cooldown mechanics lol, and did it worse then raggy from what I’m hearing. Although raggy is one of the better titles in that regard(discourages spamming and gives benefits for using other moves in arsenal to amplify said attacks). Would have been cool if they expanded on the latter idea of certain attacks buffing a cooldown ability.

Yeah when I heard there's not even elemental weaknesses I did a double take. That is like the...easiest thing. Even WoLong has it (and quite interestingly).

Even dmc3 has it.

I was thinking of picking this up - with all the (obvious but lazy) DMC comparisons I thought it might be a good stepping stone towards getting into some RPG-style combat, but it's not sounding great. It's wild how much of the FF DNA seems to be missing from what I'm hearing. Not even having status effects is certainly a choice...

> Ragnarok has better .... combat
Never thought I would hear this here.

FFXVI gives me impression of higher budget Valkyrie Elysium where game has really by the number combat and enemies are equally basic. I don't have onegamestation 5, so I'm really not in the rush now to play it.

>game didn't choose hard enough what it wanted to be
This is very accurate. The action is incredibly basic and monotonous with some of the worst enemies I've seen in a long time, and the rpg elements are...wait, what rpg elements?

>elemental weaknesses
Completely insane. Was fighting bombs and shooting fire at them and nothing happened at all. In other games it healed them. In CHAOS doing it actually caused them to explode(or you could use water to put the fire out-ironically that is a much better FF title than XVI).

>DMC comparisons
It's exhausting. It isn't like DMC. Yes this has enemy step(sort of) and a stinger attack, but that's about it. DMC doesn't have cooldowns and glory kills. If people are going to draw comparisons for everything, they at least need to be a little accurate.

Should note a funny story: was in one of the game's more slightly open areas(just a field with enemies randomly wandering around with some items placed at dead ends) and spotted an item. In order to get it I had to fight this tanky enemy/mini boss which was a slog. Went over to the item and it was...5 gil. Money in this game is already borderline useless, but giving me 5 gil made me laugh out loud.

Picked it up, I'm around halfway through the campaign. Pretty fun game so far, nothing spectacular but end game Clive might be a force to be reckoned with.
The game has similarities with Astral Chain, starts off slow and boring but keeps getting better as you progress. Similar cooldown attack system to Astral Chain too.

Cooldown abilities actually have enemy interactions and are not all "woo hoo big damage" gimmicks, which is cool.

I don't think Ragnarok has better combat but everything outside of combat, Ragnarok does better (enemy design, level design, story, weapons) etc. Bare in mind, I'm bias towards free cam action games ala DMC, NG, BAYO (FF16 uses this system) instead of over the shoulder fix cam like nu-GOW, SoulsBorne, Nioh etc.

I do admittedly like watching CAMBOWS videos mainly due to the fact it’s fun to laugh at people thinking that’s what makes a good combat system, which is fine, but you know for a fact people will try to defend a combat system with those kind of videos haha.

As someone who played Ragnarok... I'm not super surprised, looking at footage of XVI's combat. Just seems sort of simplistic and limited (Especially given that it's like, what, 35-40 hours?). I highly doubt this game will be surpassing Stranger of Paradise for me.

>all these impressions
I was already a bit skeptical of this game, what with SE having hired the dev who worked on Nero's design in DMC5, among other things... and prior to reading all this, I had the same thoughts as Infinity; this game not being heavy on RPG mechanics should probably have meant something good, but... not even the most basic of things in elemental weaknesses? This can't be real. I must have fallen through a wormhole and crossed into another dimension or something. Because this is... just... what?! Even GoW1 had petrification. So why not even status effects to go along with the action?

>XVI has worse combat than nuGoW2
Oof. Talk about condemning the combat. Definitely won't be playing this.

>Now everyone play good shit like FF12 Zodiac Age and Tactics Ogre.
And V. I know people on here mostly like Action, but if for some reason you want to play a great JRPG after having to go through this, do yourself a favor, listen to Birdman, and also play V. Advance version if at all possible.

>reminiscent of Astral Chain
A few days or a week prior release, they said that they hired Platinum (and KH3) to work on some minor things. Seems like Taura (director of Astral Chain IIRC) was helming the team who helped with the development of this game. So that's probably it.

About halfway through now, it's grown on me a tad but can't help but feel the whole thing is one-note and I don't see much replay value in it either.

It genuinely feels like every single fight ends up being the same: mash square, blow abilities, mash some more while they're recharging, dodge the occasional thing, stagger, blow abilities again, repeat for a couple minutes.

The lack of challenge could very well be a driving factor as to why it all seems so lackluster. I haven't even come close to dying in 20 hours. Maybe if enemy aggression was higher and there were more foes I would be using abilities differently or going for parries. As it stands I'm not doing much of anything. Obviously that could be a "me" problem that I'm not experimenting more but I've tried and I just don't see a lot of room for extra fun. Some abilities launch, but the air combat kinda sucks. Some pull the enemies in but then all I do is just blow a different damage ability. Ignition is fun and so are a couple other attacks but nothing is really grabbing me. I don't know how to explain it.

At least I feel somewhat compelled to play this unlike Zelda...

So enemy hit reactions seem to be ass?

Even two casual friends of mine don't really enjoy it as much as they'd thought. They feel that, even for them, it's way too streamlined. They note that dying is 'rewarded' with more potions, you can even optimize gear and skills by pressing a single button, and combat is just "press all cooldowns until they run dry, then mash attack and dodge (very leniently)". Was also surprised that Staggered bosses still cannot be launched (at least the ones he showed).

The world also seemed pretty empty, just a grassy knoll and a desert. Was thoroughly whelmed.

I'm to understand there is NTR in this. That true? You don't just get fucked in the gameplay department?

I'll throw my hat in here on some of my experience through about 70-80 hours of playing.

I played the whole game and started a hard mode run for NG+ but I had a solid experience with the title. It's riddled with a bit of an identity crisis and some design that bites its own tail, along with setting a bit of an underwhelming impression at first mechanically. Yet, I found it kept winning me over and there's a number of things I enjoyed despite, I'd freely say, will come down to preferences of what you do or don't like/care for in action games. You'll play better and some of those things aren't going to be for you, but there's substance to appreciate and creativity is rewarded to some extent (e.g. playing more with parries, some eikon specific gimmicks/switches, ability allocations). I wasn't keen on cooldowns at first myself, but with how strong you can get with certain abilities, I came to see them as more necessary over time even if they aren't a perfect solution.

Regular mobs not putting up a fight most of the time is def. what I'd consider an issue, since you aren't encouraged on a base run to think about defense as much (unfortunate, seeing as some moves have secret parrying options) and can be reckless. The good news is that button-mashing gets you nowhere, but I've heard good things about the higher difficulties upping the ante on aggression and consequences.

Bosses are going to be a source of controversy for action players because of the lack of hitstun and normally I would agree because they become blocks you can wail on, so I was a bit surprised, in my own exp., to find some ways around having those things happen and some interactions can happen by choice (parrying, jumping over, a certain eikon's unique gimmick, and two others). They can drag, but patterns and little gimmicks can keep your attention. Moreover, I did consider some other action game bosses I enjoy that lack hitstun and sort of had to concede if I could disregard in those situations, let's see what I can do here first. But if these fights don't hit the right beats for you, I won't surprise me. I definitely agree humanoid bosses should have some air juggling option part. when staggered, but there is -something- to balance that out.

Replay value will be interesting. Don't think it will be particularly high, but there's several interesting things that caught my attention that I want to play with.

I wrote a lot more elsewhere, but I'd say this game is a fractured, albeit good game in my experience with fantastic moments (1-2 among my favorite moments in the series) riddled with bizarre decisions. You'll play better, but I think it could be a lot worse.

Dan.A wrote:I'll throw my hat in here on some of my experience through about 70-80 hours of playing.

I played the whole game and started a hard mode run for NG+ but I had a solid experience with the title. It's riddled with a bit of an identity crisis and some design that bites its own tail, along with setting a bit of an underwhelming impression at first mechanically. Yet, I found it kept winning me over and there's a number of things I enjoyed despite, I'd freely say, will come down to preferences of what you do or don't like/care for in action games. You'll play better and some of those things aren't going to be for you, but there's substance to appreciate and creativity is rewarded to some extent (e.g. playing more with parries, some eikon specific gimmicks/switches, ability allocations). I wasn't keen on cooldowns at first myself, but with how strong you can get with certain abilities, I came to see them as more necessary over time even if they aren't a perfect solution.

Regular mobs not putting up a fight most of the time is def. what I'd consider an issue, since you aren't encouraged on a base run to think about defense as much (unfortunate, seeing as some moves have secret parrying options) and can be reckless. The good news is that button-mashing gets you nowhere, but I've heard good things about the higher difficulties upping the ante on aggression and consequences.

Bosses are going to be a source of controversy for action players because of the lack of hitstun and normally I would agree because they become blocks you can wail on, so I was a bit surprised, in my own exp., to find some ways around having those things happen and some interactions can happen by choice (parrying, jumping over, a certain eikon's unique gimmick, and two others). They can drag, but patterns and little gimmicks can keep your attention. Moreover, I did consider some other action game bosses I enjoy that lack hitstun and sort of had to concede if I could disregard in those situations, let's see what I can do here first. But if these fights don't hit the right beats for you, I won't surprise me. I definitely agree humanoid bosses should have some air juggling option part. when staggered, but there is -something- to balance that out.

Replay value will be interesting. Don't think it will be particularly high, but there's several interesting things that caught my attention that I want to play with.

I wrote a lot more elsewhere, but I'd say this game is a fractured, albeit good game in my experience with fantastic moments (1-2 among my favorite moments in the series) riddled with bizarre decisions. You'll play better, but I think it could be a lot worse.

I think you articulated your thoughts perfectly here. I agree, it's not an incredible action game and does have some glaring issues but it does a great job with the moment to moment gameplay and combat in general. 

I'll be interested to see what Ng+ hard mode produces because I did find normal mode to be a tad bit on the easy side.

According to the dashboard on their PS5 I’m about 65% through and I can’t do it anymore. I wouldn’t call the game bad but it’s probably the most boring thing I’ve ever played. The combat is so thoroughly uninteresting and simple and everything surrounding it is just like…whatever.

Gotta say too, the bits in between the hype moments are abysmal. Why am I getting garlic and collecting sand while the world is in ruin? Pretty sure the quiet moments in FFX at least involved character development or learning about the world, not doing shitty MMO errands.

Ironically, a few of my more 'normal' gaming friends also ditched the game. They noted that they saw their progress, compared it to online, saw they were barely halfway and just sold the game haha.

The Casual Brit reviewed this and it was a greatest hits of stupidity:

-Compared every aspect of the game to DMC5
-When doing his montage of "bad" examples, he showed Stranger of Paradise, while he praised the shitshow that is FF16
-He said Ninja Gaiden has an abusable dodge with a bunch of iframes, which he bunched in with DMC5 and KH

This is all a troll right? There's no way a guy who plays and talks about games for a living is this much of a bum.

>compared it to dmc5
“Compare something like a slow paced puny rpg game(shows 3 seconds of just parrying a guys attack to make it look trash) to something where you have to learn the very deep combos that require timing and positioning and knowledge of enemy’s and bosses(shows a 20 second clip of doing a combo against a fodder enemy)”.

I was hoping he would talk more about the stagger system, since it looked pretty boring in the videos I've seen. Instead he spent 70% of the video talking about the story. Bravo.

>dmc5
I just love how every game is simple in his mind yet DMC is this incredibly elaborate combat system that requires(insert every adjective related to mastering a game).

>stagger system
He would have to know anything about combat systems to talk about it, unfortunately(and for the record, what you've seen in videos is about all there is to it).

>talking about the story for 45 minutes
>for a game where the story is grimdark for half of it and then descends into 90s JRPG edgelord cringe
Bravo is right.

>stagger system
Only time he touched on it was during the cooldown section of how enemy staggers let abilitys do more damage. As well as some dumbass accessory (which does look neat).

>story
Really took me by surprised how much of the video it took(that being most of it).

FF16 is utter shit. Whoever made this game needs to see a psychologist.

It's basic, unoriginal and has no redeeming qualities. Worthless sitting down sim.

I read there will be two DLCs. Eventually we'll get the Take a Seat edition.

#MMGA

You played it birdman?

>what you've seen in videos is about all there is to it
Does it work like VIIR (with the pressured state, magic and elemental weaknesses increasing stagger and Focused moves increasing the gauge a lot while the enemy is pressured) or is it just "do damage, bar fills up, do even more damage"? From the videos and seeing you guys talk about it, it looks like the latter.

>Take a Seat edition
Can't wait for it.

>read there will be DLCs
I wish they would elevate the game in the way FFV's, XII's, VII:R's (and KH's) did for their respective base games (though of these examples, I've only heard about XII being kind of subpar on release, while the others already were good enough or their core was already solid). But that's obviously not going to happen here.

>You played it birdman?
No.

But I have many sources now. Everything points to it being basic trash.
My brother has it. Watched him play and it sucks.

#MMGA

Malcar wrote:
Does it work like VIIR (with the pressured state, magic and elemental weaknesses increasing stagger and Focused moves increasing the gauge a lot while the enemy is pressured) or is it just "do damage, bar fills up, do even more damage"? From the videos and seeing you guys talk about it, it looks like the latter.

FF16 has no extra mechanique that increases you stagger damage, like VIIR's pressured state, the only way to do more stagger damage is by having better stats.

Why did they do a step backwards? It doesn't make sense, especially considering that VIIR stagger didn't get criticized.

Are the enemy hit states lacking to the point Stun is the main standout one? That’s sad.

>step backwards
The XVI team likely doesn't have as much experience with Stagger as the VII:R team. The question is, why make a game built around this if that's the case? Maybe a higher up demanded this to be the case? We may never know.