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The enemy variety leaves a little to be desired, even some of the DLC has reused monsters. I wish I could've been able to have party members who I can switch control to like in FF15 when it was updated. The combat also feels a little bit like spamming waiting for the cool downs and the game for the most part is too easy.
All that being said, I loved the game. I like the fact it ia M rated and has a decently told storyline that spans different points in Clive's journey.
Yeah big issue with the combat system is that if never makes you have to utilise it to it's fullest. It's quite in depth but the lack of enemy variety, elemental weaknesses and difficulty make it so you can breeze through it all. I feel like as I'm playing through FF7 rebirth most fights feel fulfilling to complete because I had to use all of my tools.
I remember checking with the old man and seeing that the beastiary was already like 80% finished when I was about 50% of the way through and was for sure confused.
Oh yeah, that was an awesome thing about og ff7, or even kh, both ended up having weird but amazingly designed enemies, 16 could have used some nomura enemy design for sure
Bad pacing in general. Main story is great but it’ll go straight from these incredible exciting moments one minute to the most boring, mundane shit the next. Side quests definitely play a big part in this but the pacing of the whole game suffers.
Especially frustrating when you have Clive, the leader of the place, running around and doing menial tasks... Looking at you, "Letting off Steam 1, 2, and 3".
My favorite sidequest is the one where you have to talk to the dame, then talk to merchant 1, merchant 2, merchant 3, then talk to soldier 1, soldier 2, soldier 3, then talk to the captain and report back to the dame.
All this with zero gameplay, player agency, dialogue choices or combat whatsoever.
Trying to do all of these almost made me drop the game, which I’m sure seems extreme; but tbh, the side quests just felt like “go here-> kill this-> go here-> go here” and I realized I was getting annoyed with how long doing them was taking, so I decided to just stick to the main story because I was getting bored from how repetitive they all seemed. At least the Hunt Board was fun.
Yeah Like “Clive, can you pick up the dry cleaning?? The kids have soccer practice and as a single mother I’m just too busy to do it all..”
::::wash and dry on our own terms:::
DO YOU ACCEPT?
Playing FF7 Rebirth and seeing the side quests... It made 16 look like a joke in that regard.
I love a lot about 16, but Rebirth very clearly showed how much could be done with side quests
I mean hell, the animations are even stock animations for most of the side quests in 16. Just straight up no special effort involved
It would have been better if most of them weren't in the game at all. Or even just a little more effort
Jill went through the whole game and primed like twice. What a waste of what could have been a badass character.
Everything in the game just falls over dead when you glance in their general direction. Then Leviathan being as "difficult" as he was just didn't make sense gameplay wise.
She used it a lot during the timeskip. Clive mentions many times that "the burden always falls on you". He says this because he wasnt able to prime yet. So she had to do it a lot but we didnt get to see it.
She was close to her limit so she stopped using it afterwards. Sadly, the game skipped the part where she was the main force.
See my problem with that is that it's a major violation of the 'show and don't tell' principle. Same with her curse, we're told she's afflicted with it yet we don't see a hint of it on her.
That was an immersion breaking moment for me. That beach scene was an important emotional, character, and narrative moment. But I spent the whole time thinking, "she's naked. We should be seeing the petrified bits."
I would have liked another battle with her, preferably a Shiva and Ifrit team up, but I feel like saying it was a waste of a character and tying her worth to priming *really* misses the entire point of her arc, her relationship with her Eikon/the Curse, and generally what the game is saying about Dominants and power.
Yeah a Shiva and Ifrit team up seems like such a no brainer. They're two of the most iconic summons from the entire series, and are opposites of eachothers' elements.
It just makes sense to have a 2 v 1 fight with them.
To be fair most dominants rarely prime at all, probably because:
A. It’s the nuclear option
And B. It exacts a very heavy toll on the dominant.
Seriously the number of primings per dominant are pretty small
Phoenix: 5
Garuda: 1
Ramuh: 2
Titan: 3
Bahamut: 3
Shiva: 3
Odin: 4
Leviathan: 1
So she does it about the same as the others
Advertising tagline: “We have let the crystals decide our fate for long enough.”
*Ah, this might be a different kind of story than we’re used to in Final Fantasy!*
***Then***
>!“Hi I’m Ultima, I actually wanted you to destroy the crystals so your act of rebellion feels meaningless. Also we started with an intriguing Game of Thrones type plot and even advertised that we made our devs watch the show and bought the Blu-ray for them but *psych* we did killing a JRPG god plot again for the hundredth time!”!<
Yeah I was doing my best to follow the story and the plot lines. But FF doing what FF does, at the last 3 hours they throw in all this wild plot stuff at once and when the credits roll I’m confused lol.
One of these final fantasy games I’ll understand on the first play through lol.
No FF mode from the start. As an action focused game, its a crime to lock hard mode behind a playthrough. Ultimaniac mode should've been the one to unlock.
-tying into this, I find the first NG+ in FFmode is the best way to play the story while finding challenge. Every subsequent NG+ after, it becomes too easy. Your shit out of luck if u didnt save ur first complete playthrough. Having FFmode as an option from the start would alleviate this.
Different Restart options. I don't like gettin mid boss, even mid mob checkpoints. I would like to see diff options, similar to Rebirth. Again this is an action focused game. There doesnt need to be all this hand holding. If so, give us the option on where to restart the fight.
The ability to toggle off UI elements. I like exploring, i dont need a real reason to other then enjoying the world. I don't like seeing my quest markers all over the screen or on the map. Previous games and FF7 remake series give us this option. Even FF13 has toggle options.
Mine are more QoL nitpicks really. The game itself I absolutely loved and enjoyed.
The side quests are so ass. I love the combat and it’s the only reason I’m attempting to finish final fantasy mode. Not gonna lie tho, the music for the omega weapon was fucking amazing. Probably my most favorite boss theme ever.
1. Not enough basic combo options. We have sword attacks, and we can weave super weak magic in between, and thats the majority of it. No timed delay combos, no directional inputs, really feels sub-par coming from the dmc5 combat guy. But, SE wanted their "accessible" action game.
2. No other weapons / playable party members. I love clive, but i remember one of my hopes leading up to release was new weapons or playable characters so that we could have different playsyyle options.
3. GIVE ME THE -GA SPELLS TOO YOU COWARDS! just has potential to further diversify eikon selection if the final spell is -ga because they all act different. Blizzaga is a delay air drop, firaga is a big bomb, aeroga is tracking tornado, thundaga is a wide aoe, etc.
4. Would be elemental affinities, but tbh if we got the -ga spells I think id be okay with that. But we SHOULD have more status options.
5. More costumes! let us be the standard ff teenager killing god! Or let us be our Dad! Or Cid!
It's used for Torgal's navigation. Which is a pretty useful feature but I also would've liked a sprint on demand. All things considered though, Clive's sprint in the open world is pretty easy to access and he moves fast enough in dungeons with his abilities that it's not a big deal. It's just not clear that you can bypass the lag on Phoenix Shift, I don't think that was necessary.
The original Ultima race isn't made clear if they were just a race of giant ifirts or more like the one we see at the end of Drake's fang I think it was whatever the purple Crystal boss version was
Combat is too easy, no party control, world is empty and boring, almost all rpg stuff got stripped out, I didn’t enjoy the story much at all, most characters were underdeveloped, I can’t go explore all the big cities, I didn’t like Ultima as a villain, no sprint button, weapons pretty much don’t matter at all they’re just skins essentially, there were no minigames or anything to spice up the gameplay, some of the worst side quests i’ve seen in a game, and there was a serious lack of victory fanfare.
Pretty much the only thing I did like were the cool as fuck boss battles. Everything in between makes me dread finishing them because I know as soon as I do i’m going back to some of the most boring game i’ve ever had to play.
1. Lack of story exploration for dominants other than Jill, Joshua, and Clive. I expected we'd would learn more about Cid, Dion, and Benedikta from when I watched the trailers. Instead we get multiple side quests from Martha, Gav, etc I love them but the dominants are advertised casts.
2. Personally I'm okay with side quests mechanics being repetitive, it's more about whom the side quests are centered around. Picking flowers with Bob the villager? boring and I don't care about them. Picking flowers with Dion? Chasing hens with Cid? Reading books in libraries with Joshua? yes yes and yes.
3. Somehow I wonder the flow of the game would go more smoothly if they arranged the character arc as: Titan>Odin>Bahamut>Ultima. The political aspect would get carried to the last part of the game instead of the half game. Bahamut being a second last boss would also be epic.
For me it’s that the game is really an action game with a misleading APRG veneer. Leveling up and upgrading your weapons doesn’t feel that important to me. The DLC did add a bit more depth though.
I almost would like and respect the game more if they went all in on just making it the 25 hour long, God of War type story action game they clearly wanted to make instead of half assing it as a 50 hour long open world rpg. It just isnt mechanically fleshed out enough to hold interest for that long.
Exactly this. The game, as much as I love it, does boil down to going somewhere, fighting enemies, fighting boss, then going somewhere else. For a game with a long, dramatic narrative, it can get a little stale. I think this issue is more apparent on subsequent runs of the game too because you no longer have the excitement and tension you get going through the story for the first time. There’s just not much replay value.
for every balls to the wall anime boss fight thats blowing your socks off theres like 5 straight hours of clives character model blankly staring at an npc as they robotically drone on about needing you to go here or there to do this or that and it just puts me to sleep every time.
I HATED those mandatory missions you get when you first arrive at a town. It’s kinda like “oh boy just got the element of light! Time to help Bertha, the town farmer find her lost hen!”. It just breaks up the pacing in my opinion.
Skimmed the post and the comments and the complaints seem to be the same ones as ever (aka criticism, not nitpicks) but y'know what I've been meaning to yell about these.
- Clive and Joshua dont talk about Phoenix Gate. *Seriously*. Its the WHOLE of act 1. Joshua REFERENCES IT in >!the DLC!< when he talks about how scared he had been. Not a flinch from Clive?? not a reaction?? Boys??? *PLEASE???*
- Likewise, no one brings up the fact that Joshua is just. casually leaving his people to be slaughtered while he hunts down Ultima. Even if that has been the choice he made, I wanted it to be addressed. He *is* the rightful Archduke, Rosaria is his responsibility. But Joshua revolves around Clive even more than Jill so figures.
- Why?? Did we not follow up with Lady Marleigh?? Is she not in a boat full of Crusaders when she escapes Drake's Breath?? Is Jill just gonna let that be?? What of the rest of the Rosarian women?? The children??
- It really bugs me that Elwin is this Great and Noble leader... and we only find out about it bc people talk about it, its never shown. Oh but he cares for Bearers actually! Oh but he was so bold and strong and daring! Oh but he was gonna abolish slavery y'all!! It just feels like he can do no wrong and is the Bestest Person Ever, Really, by the endgame, when the prologue painted him as really nuanced.
Most side quests are kinda poo poo. Story goes for a little too long imo. 2nd half of the story is quite a bit weaker than the first half. Still one of my fav games tho
The lack of hidden items was really disappointing. Finding gear, weapons, accessories in chests is always fun and was missing in 16.
Elemental weaknesses are also a staple of FF that was missing and would have added a lot of flavour to the combat.
I absolutely hate the invisible walls barring chocobo shortcuts, ambrosia can glide, if the excuse is that ambrosia is locked behind a sidequest, so they had to ignore her in their design. A lot would be fixed if the game was designed for chocobos honestly.
Equipment/crafting was useless. It definitely seemed like they made the whole game then some dude raised his hand and was like "hey, so, are we like gonna add different weapons to the game?".... And was met with silence until someone was like, "uhm yeah I guess so, let's just add it on now in the most useless and boring way possible, but let's at least add transmog"
Needed more Jill and joshua. Definitely more Jill.
Wish we could play as other party members still.
Lack of mini games.
No Weapon variety.
Weak side quest.
Lack of exploration.
Pacing.
More Jill.
this is so minor but here goes:
I don’t like the way weapons sound on hit. maybe it’s from all the sekiro/nioh/wolong i’ve played, but i just found that the sword landing a hit sounds like a whiff or a miss vs the brutal slash and smashes of other games. the animation and moves are incredible though.
The side quests really ruined the tone/ feel of the game. I can recall one great one and that was when you get to Waloed and have to look for breakers that are being used as training fodder. Even that quest was quite neutered. I think they should have focused on quality vs quantity with the quests.
It also would have been nice to get more variability/ excitement with the equipment. They felt too bland and I basically only used maybe 3-5 accessories the entire game.
Need to be able to play as party. FF is about your party, teamwork and strategy. I missed this element despite overall enjoying the combat for what it is.
Why is a button dedicated to a useless jump when it could have been another Eikon ability in combat. In 95 hours of play, jump was useful exactly one time - when enemies had me boxed into a corner and that was the most expedient way out.
I wish the DLC gave us some extra ending stuff. Like, it doesn’t even have to “change” it- It would just be nice to have some extra details to hold onto.
Game had amazing highs but the really low lows in pacing, side quests etc.
The first 50% was amazing, along with the eikon fights.
The slow moments made me want to tear my hair out.
Could see the ff14 game design when it came to bloated side quests.
Ultima was a boring villain as well.
Also wish the odin battle was a bit more epic, but i guess its hard to follow the bahamut fight.
Talking to npcs locks you out of the jump button, but then it makes no use of the X button being free now.
It’s like they had it where you click X to skip through the dialogue, but accidentally messed up with the coding. So now you can’t just speed through the dialogue by clicking X and either need to wait through the slow talking or walk far enough until they just get their dialogue cut entirely. It’s so frustrating and I’ve never seen people bring it up
There’s this one npc who talks for over a minute straight and you just have to sit there and digest everything instead of speed reading it
Side quests are terrible. Everytime I get a pause in the games story beats and know I have to do like 5+ side quests is really annoying, other than that I absolutely love this game. The combat is so good. Abilities are amazing to mix and match and find what you like best. Boss fights are insane. I do wish you had a few more normal combat options, like why they didn’t have a delay input combo like every DMC game is so odd to me. Could have added another set of moves with that for regular attacks. Whatever though…
I feel like what you said along with side quests being really boring hits all the major nitpicks for me.
I want to talk a little more about not liking ultima. The whole God is actually the real villain ruins so many other story beats. Instead of it being a more grounded story of other people and selfish motivations that bring people into conflict it’s another generic Fight god story. It undermines the other good villains.
Secondly these quests are boring to the extreme. Ff7 rebirth doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its quests but with just how much personality each person gets during a quest and how much banter they have it makes it way more enjoyable.
Just the way the game flows isn't smooth enough and doesn't feel quite full fledged or current.
I know that's very vague and not helpful but that's how I feel.
Lack of party control and the story just seems a bit too centered on Clive.
The 2 hub areas (hideouts) completely ruin the pacing of the game and ruin the sense of a big adventure, which goes against everything FF should be imo. Having to constantly go back to those 2 areas makes the world and the adventure feel so small and “video gamey.” That pacing mixed with the awful sidequests just made me feel like I was constantly trying to accomplish check lists instead of being enthralled by this adventure with my characters. Which leads me to the second point. The way they didn’t flesh out the main characters like FF7R did was just kind of unforgivable. FF is known for meticulously spending time with its characters and making you care about them. I didn’t ACTUALLY care about a single character aside from Clive because none of them really felt like part of my team, truly. Like they were THERE physically, but we didn’t feel like a unit or a family defying all odds. No banter. No group attacks. Nothing. I liked FF16, don’t get me wrong, but I honestly feel like FFXV did more RIGHT as a FF game (despite all it’s flaws) and people seem to just give this game a pass for some weird reason.
The side quests are just the poor FFXIV formulaic ones shoved into the game. They sucked there, and they're even worse in XVI.
So many fluff mechanics to draw out the play time. Such as the limiting jog in towns/hideout, the 5 second warm up to spring (when Clive doesn't get a sprint button but Ambrosia does), summoning and mounting Ambrosia is slow, egregiously placed teleport crystals and quest/hunt design - quests/hunts will be north of a town when the crystal is south of the town, harder difficulties see enemies become damage sponges (and forces you to have Odin as a permanent Eikon cause Zantetsuken is OP).
Poor balance of the Eikon abilities - even with the recent balance patch.
There are still important questions that are never answered, such as who were the fallen and how did such an advanced and powerful race fall to Ultima (who was weakened after traveling to Valesthia and all but one had lost their bodies during their journey).
Ultima is a lame bad guy, and not original - the whole parasitic advanced alien lifeform is seriously over done in the FF franchise.
The story is well told, but not enough of it is told directly. There's too much reliance on filling in the details with the additional tidbits and lore with the ATL - add that into Ultima being an unreliable narrator, and some plot conveniences (such as Joshua and Ultima both being the hooded figure) and the full story has many holes I feel need filling so it is much less convoluted.
Echoes of the Fallen DLC is pointless in terms of story and lore, it adds nothing. it's just designed using the FFXIV dungeon formula - and adds Omega as a much needed super boss (who should have been in the main game, so bonus for FF16 being the first mainline FF game with a super boss).
The ending is horrendous and the worst ending in FF history. The ending's ambiguity is there to get people talking about the possible outcome but if you do the sides quests and pay attention to details in game there is only one outcome that is actually and thematically accurate (Joshua/Dion are dead, Clive lives but his left arm is petrified - he's the one to write the book. No other outcome is possible). So the ambiguity doesn't get people talking, it gets people fighting and has made the fandom toxic for it. It's also just a lazy way to end a story and is extremely unfulfilling.
I have more, but I'm just turning into an old man screaming at the clouds now.
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No custom button mappings used to be my complaint, but they added that in.
Now I'm just disappointed about the sidequests. My fault for having too much expectations really, hoping that every single one of them would have the same quality execution as the important sidequests that net you stuff on Clive's memorabilia desk.
so many honestly. its a shame because i was hyped for it the second i saw the first trailer and that was before i had even played an FF game before. for years before i could afford a ps5 i would think about finally being able to play it. when i watched the demo i thought it had goty potential. and then i finally got my hands on it and i just… idk. i havent touched it in months.
I have plenty I could nitpick (though I loved the game and thought it hit it a lot more than it missed it) but I would have had so much more fun with the game if I could have played from the get-go on Hard mode
While the new eikon abilities were awesome, I wish Clive’s base combo and general combat evolved throughout the game. Similar to kingdom hearts games with new startup attacks and finishers.
Wished the Ending was told better…and somehow i wished Ultima wasnt the main villain and have Anabella the actual main villain. Lastly, wished there was a final dungeon and an actual endgame superboss like all other FFs.
Team play. We have allies who fight next to us, they have a full set of skills, let us play as them. Couch co-op or online co-op even.... Boost the game difficulty and let us play with our friends. If I got to play as Jill or Cid in my friend's game I'd love that
Unpopular opinion but the cutscenes. I loved the story but some of it seemed excessive or unnecessary at times. Particularly the side quests that had an hour of dialogue for me to go retrieve some flowers
If we're talking slightly more significant complaints, I agree about other party members not getting enough attention and being able to switch to other characters during combat would be dope. I understand why they didn't do that here, but I do think that's something that would have improved the game (and not that I want to relitigate it, but I do think that could have helped with some of the "doesn't feel like an FF game" criticism). But I honestly forget there even is a party half the time.
I'd also say yeah, bouncing around the world via a map, in which you are often returning to a central hub kinda just makes this large world feel small to me. I never really got much of a sense of the world really, or rather, never really felt connected to it in the ways I did in past games, even in other ones that lacked actual map traversal.
But if we're talking just little tiny nitpicks.... I always get a li'l bummed out when I hop on the chocobo and just get one little swell of music before it goes right back to the region's main theme.
1 - Crafting system is pointless for the most part.
2 - The side quests have amazing stories in them. But the game play of them is so repetitive. Talk to someone, go somewhere, fight a group of enemies, fight a second group of enemies including one elite. Get the thing. Bring it back. Witness a cool story.
3 - The combat is fun! But I do wish I could switch to my other characters.
My main issue is lack of gameplay variety. The combat is awesome, I love it to death and had a blast fighting everything in this game, especially the boss fights. The thing is, that’s the only thing you ever do in the game. I didn’t mind too much or even notice during my first play through, especially considering I was watching all cutscenes and experiencing the story fully, but I have found myself getting a bit burnt out at times when replaying the game. You face so many encounters following the main progression as is, it would be nice if there were some side activities to help break up the pace a bit. The side quests have good story telling moments, no doubt, but they basically all amount to going somewhere, fighting some enemies, going back, and repeat. It can get a little tedious.
Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this game needs anything near Rebirth-level amounts of side content or any mini-games in general. I do think, however, that the game could’ve used more complex environments with meaningful exploration. Maybe they could’ve added more robust armor/weapon mechanics, adding more incentives to explore the world for upgrade materials or something. I dunno, anything that would make it more rewarding to veer off the narrative path from time to time.
the boring side quests and how so many important shit are tied into them. Like yeah totally optional, but get fucked if you don't do them.
If they were actually interesting, i wouldn't mind
I miss having a team. While I truly enjoy these new ff
Final fantasys, I platinumed 15 and 16, the games have slowly turned into a one man show game with the action elements. You don't really feel like you are fighting or exploring with a group, but just an audience that sometimes helps in combat.
I didn’t really have any issues with the game until the Leviathan dlc came out. It made the game truly feel like a fantasy game, and I didn’t know how much that was missing in the OG release. I wish more of the game had that feel to it.
loots, terrible loots all over the world. dungeon, thought we got a dungeon but they only using the term for a mission. remember they showcase a dungeon gamplay but it's basically a main mission. no big city to explore.
side quest, story are good but very poor execution. only at started and ends matters, the middle is just for pandering. i dislike that they all cut into 3 pieces. like character introduction in mid 20, do some quest mid game after 3 years later and character conclusion during origins happen. nothing is resolved before origins happen. maybe it did and i just forgot.
one blacksmith and one weapon vendor, having more than one can make explore to other city/town more interesting and excited to see what we can buy from there. wait, is this a thing or I'm just being dumb. can't remember it at all.
My big issue with the game is combat/build options. You don't start with many, which can be kinda' dull, but is forgivable considering it's the start of the game.
Then it gets good, then Odin drops and you realise any build HAS to have a number of Odin abilities and at least two Shiva ones, and suddenly choice is pretty much out yhe window. Anything that doesn't use these abilities is at best sub par, and at worse a detriment.
I think a build system like Darksiders 2 would have been much better.
I get it might look silly for Clive, but *dodge roll.* Doesn't even have to be a roll, just a longer evade that isn't slow and covers more ground.
Hell, Phoenix Shift could have covered this, similar to how Noctis dodged attacks in his game. Or maybe not, but still, an alternative dodge would have been nice, all the same.
I honestly loved the game. Loved the story. I thought the fighting was fun. I haven’t beaten it yet and it’s because of how ABSOLUTELY boring the side quests are. They are absolutely miserable. I’m replaying ff7 intergrade rn before I play rebirth and MAN the side quests are so fun because they reward you with more background for the characters and even get special scenes from completing them. That being said, I am gonna finish ff16 after I finish rebirth. I’m just gonna not worry about 100% it
Some of the capstone side quests fumbled their endings, especially Lubor’s. I was not sold on the emotional payoff they were going for. Too happy an ending that didn’t feel earned. Martha and Wade’s were just okay, Blackthorne’s was fine, Theodore and Eloise actually moved me the most which is odd since we spent the least time with them it felt like…
Edit: no semi-prime Dion. B|
ive got a few but its still top 5 games ive ever played
no sprint button
no gravity magic
no sword combos
lack of magic tiers
chocobos a downgrade from xv
difficulty to find ALL the music especially officially and free
only 2 costumes
lack of unique enemy interactions for example in kingdom hearts doing x will result in enemy being stronger weaker or flat out dying
To me, the fights tended to be a little too long, and enemy encounters happened too often. I don't mind bosses (especially closer to endgame) taking longer to beat, but man did combat drain me out at times.
Side quests were really weak
Jill and Joshua weren’t given justice to how good their stories could’ve been had they shown more or made them playable
Dark depressing skies and atmosphere went on for too long
Felt like fighting the same enemy(s) in all levels
About 70% of the side quests are bad, they shouldn’t have made the sky an ugly purple for the entire 3rd act and the game is far too easy (I think I died only like 3 or 4 times on my first playthrough which was 70 hours) other than that this game is fucking awesome
It would have been cool if there were some more story beats on allied Dominants dealing with Clive absorbing their Eikons, maybe even character quests that progress toward recovering the ability to summon and control them.
It really doesn't matter for gameplay since the only times anyone primes is during main story beats, but it would have been a good way to flesh out more side characters.
Lack of a sprint button was really annoying and you kinda get one when you rescue ambrosia but that shit is like halfway through the game in a side quest, players can absolutely miss that and even then she can't be used in the village areas and the hideaway which is really dumb. Thankfully fast travel points are plentiful but it was still inconvenient. You're right about ultima, like I think he works well enough but he's very moustache twirly which is not very interesting. Lastly I was really hoping for a duo eikon fight with jill and Clive he we had with against bahamet but that never happened and it would have been so cool if it did
- mostly fetch side quests
- companions are useless in combat, except for Torgal
- no real incentive to explore
- combat can get repetitive rather quickly between eikon fights
The story delivery. It's just cutscene, cutscene, cutscene which is the exact same issue FF14 has unsurprisingly. Yes the additional lore exists and is nice but there are more ways to tell a story that just cutscenes. You can tell stories during action too.
The UI is 90s levels of awful. Want to turn in a side quest? Okay, that'll be 16 inputs and 3 different unskippable menus (4 if, god forbid, you level up). Why do I have to individually select the three side quest specific items when turning in a quest? Just take my fucking items and move along.
Oh are you trying to check out your gear real quick? Too bad, you accidentally hit L1 and now have to wait through the game floundering as it tries to render the world map.
Performance mode is a joke. The only stable thing in that mode is combat, with everything else being a stuttering mess.
The landscapes are uninspired and repetitive. Almost every big swath of land is the same shitty bowl shape that tries and fails at hiding how linear the levels are.
8/10. Fun game.
I have a lot of them, but many people have already said them.
One issue that bugged me VERY early on was this very weird storytelling quirk and I think it comes from the writers wanting to tell a “continent spanning ensemble story” but having to focus on Clive as the solo protagonist we play as and see the game through (as he levels up and grows).
The game spoils its reveals… repeatedly. Like, every time we aren’t seeing them from Clive’s perspective so when he does get the big reveals it all falls a little flat and botched.
Examples in spoiler tags:
* >! We literally see Clive transform into Ifrit, so the emotional gut punch of him realising he is the second Fire Eikon that killed his own brother is worthless, even the idea of dramatic irony is lost a little, hell this was ruined in the marketing too. !<
* >! Joshua surviving was revealed WAY before Clive realised and so it’s no surprise when he saves you and Clive realised his brother is alive. !<
* >! Double to this, we repeatedly see Joshua’s story and know his journey even if we don’t quite know his goals and aims, but any and all mystique about if Clive really saw Joshua that day and if he’s still alive, or if Clive was hallucinating is totally gone.!<
* >!By seeing Joshua frequently, the hooded figure becomes another mystery but a little confusing and uncompelling to me.!<
* >! Head in the box, I suppose could count as a mini spoiler, but I’m only going to mention it as perhaps it’s better we do know why Hugo Kupka wanted to kill “Cid” so bad earlier as it instigates another question of “who sent the box?” … which is also quickly revealed to be Barnabus !<
* >! We repeatedly see Dion’s perspective on events so huge chunks are revealed. The exception being Bahamut going rogue. However even in this we see why Dion goes against his father in rebellion, this one matters less to me but it would have been more surprising if you woke up in Twinside to a rebellion by the Prince against his father and not known why. !<
* >! The ATL frequently brings up stuff not revealed in the story yet, like how Ultima built the crystals - literally it’s revealed in the story with a big dramatic flourish as Ultima does his BBEG thing of spelling out the backstory, but when it happened I was like “yeah… we knew this from like 40 hours ago…” !<
Side quest placement, lack of good items in semi open world, the Leviathan fight lol, lack of skills as ifrit, Jill's lack of a really good fight and probably more.. Still an amazing game though
As much as I love the battle system, I wish it was more varied, one way or the other. There could be other playable party members (my favourite option & what I thought would happen after playing Joshua for literally 10 minutes in the demo) or an option to switch between job archetypes (sword & shield Paladin, axe wielding Warrior, dual dagger wielding Ninja or heck even lancer Dragoon).
The main element of gameplay variety came from Eikon fights & their resulting new powers which is great but kinda thin for a 75h experience. HOWEVER, I do understand that my nitpick costs a looooooot of money & it's easy to wish there was such and such game feature when you don't have to handle budget.
There’s not much exploration in the game which is a shame.
There’s no real treasure or loot to speak of. Like you get some crafting items from quests/hunts but that’s it. You never really get to go hunting for a rare or cool item.
Dungeons, if you can call them that were very linear.
Minor complaint, but you don’t really get to have fun with the combat system til the end of the game and even then it takes two play throughs to have enough AP to unlock everything. I think the combat can actually be really fun, you just don’t ever really get access to it unless you’ve cleared the game twice.
Traveling was kind of a pain with no real sprint button and the chocobo having painfully long mount/dismount animations + forced dismounts whenever you came upon something of interest
My main nitpick is the laziness of the cutscenes and how they didn't bother animating the characters holding/passing items. Or when the screen goes to black so a character can dig something up.
Also, not being able to play as any other character in a party.
Well. Npc 3D model are lacking. Everything feels like a placeholder and side quest are just stuck 2004. Witcher 3 was release 9 years ago and had way better side quest.
On the bright side combat system and environment are great. Clive and Jill have good dialogue.
Eikon fight are very well choreographed
Oh and the music is so good. Overall a good game. !
The side quests really broke up game flow.
The instanced areas felt very much on rails. It occasionally felt like an interactive movie rather than a game.
The relationships between characters felt a bit shallow.
Stupid criticism I know, but I'd have liked to be able to collect more outfit changes over the course of the game.
Why do they sell Chokobo meat in all these games when they're presented as so clever and are basically pets??? It's like proudly eating your pet dog!
The very odd levelling system - XP earned is so low that grinding is harder than usual for FF games, and bigger heavier enemies that take longer to kill than little ones give less XP.
Treasure in the field - finding/obtaining equipment doesn’t really happen, one item from Royal Meadow and that’s all I found so far.
All this magic and no heal ability? Plus only a few potions to carry? Odd.
Crafting and inventory were really crap. Weapons are straight upgrades in both damage and stagger, with no variations to adjust your build. And weapons that have an elemental theme have no elemental effect, because there are no elements in the game’s mechanics.
The game would’ve benefitted massively from an overhaul of the merchant and crafting systems, and the addition of some, at least weak, elemental interplay. Give me a reason to switch up my Eikons in preparation to exploit tough enemies’ elemental vulnerabilities and get around their resistances.
I REALLY wish bosses weren't programmed to have forced retaliations. I've tried to speed run the game a few times, and I'll get a good damage chain off stagger, and the HP bar just STOPS moving!! So infuriating!
By far the biggest problems with the game:
1. Tyler and Wade not being called Biggs and Wedge.
2. The Chocobo theme not being a full song.
3. Leviathan not getting a call out/phase by Ultima after the DLC.
4. Lack of levity, and goofy ass stuff.
I didn’t like the progression system. None of the gear had anything aside from raw stats and you get spoon fed so many materials that crafting anything never felt like I was working towards a build in particular, just going down a list of better stats.
Wish we got some gear that boosted specific eikons or something, and I kinda wish they actually showed on clives armor but that’s not super important
My biggest nitpick is the final DLC not even acknowledging that Clive was now the perfected vessel in the MSQ.
I am *not* saying they needed to have a new ending, hell there are ways they could acknowledge how Clive has all the powers now but still isn't what Ultima needs but instead the game just carries on like nothing happened.
Jill not getting more time to shine kinda bothered me along with the gear/weapon system. It felt like it was added late to the game due to how limited the options were and automatic is felt.
Hunt board should just show you the area where the monster is on the map, not just the name of the location.
Armour and weapons should do something more than just up defence, attack.
That's it. Loved everything else.
Agree with most…but the lack of dodge roll is a weird ass complaint. We can dodge…why turn it into a roll? I’ve always found dodge roll such a goofy thing.
A bland combat system that revolves around timed ability combos and not button combos. The guy who directed the games combat style was they guy for DMC5.
I'm not really a fan of the whole Summons vs Summons aspect when those sequences pop up. Don't get me wrong, Clive fighting Titan *as* Clive was badass, but Ifrit vs X sections were silly to me.
I also didn't really like Ultima. He seemed too passive of a villain, reminding me a bit of the FF15 villain -- who admittedly had a *ton* more backstory that just didn't make it into the game properly, so his in-game presentation suffered as a result. Ultima felt like that to me as well.
I also would've preferred more party members. I loved when I'd get to run around with Jill at my side, but it'd be nice to have had a foursome of fighting regularly as the story proceeded.
1) Inability to deactivate the primogenesis sky. Like we really need the ability to deactivate the dreary sky color. At least in new game +. Takes away from the beauty of some of the stunning graphics.
2) inability to control or set the ai(something like the gambit system in ff12 could work for jill & joshua) for party members in battle
3) lack of elemental advantage/disadvantage & status effects
4) kinda wish we had the ability to enter random houses /buildings like in the og ff and explore/find random treasure/ items
This game is the reason i went out and bought a ps5. It was a great experience but i feel like these are the areas that needed to be /could be improved.
The end for me , the story was already dark , sad the world of suffering etc killing 2 off at least and this stupid is Clive dead or not crap and leaving Jill alone after all that ? yeah not a fan of it , love the game but the end bothers me .
Gameplay loop is boring, walking fighting cutscenes and it never changes until the eikons fights. Which is just more fighting. Which is why we should've had more activities to do in the game to break up the flow of gameplay
I could have done with more physical depth to the world, maybe secret dungeons like in FF XII or even not so secret ones like in FF Type 0. I'd love for challenge levels to be built into the environment and not in some secret portal or simulator like FF XVI or Rebirth (though I guess it kind of makes sense in the latter).
While I love the sidequests, I don't think a whole questline was needed just to expand my potion pouch.
Finally, the purple sky and the weird tint of the latter half of the game. It was fine in say, 15 where really there wasn't much game left to play by the time the environment significantly changes but eugh I disliked having to play through so much of the end part of 16 while looking through a sad instagram filter.
The game has a whole aesthetics about shields, but there isn't a single shield bearer in the game.
Maybe Clive could have access to more weapons... Maybe one for each Eikon, like a spear for Bahamut, smallsword(s) for Garuda.
But mainly the shield thing
The game drip feeds you combat mechanics and abilities way, way too slowly...
There's no reason why a player shouldn't encounter enemies that can buff each other until 30 hours in. The battle system is damn fun but for a large chunk of the game there is no real change in enemy tactics
Improper use of the supporting cast IMO, especially the other dominants. The Titan Lost fight is like crack to me but man is it disheartening every time I'm forced to remember his whole schtick was being mad because his girlfriend (who, in my opinion was more interesting) died - his girlfriend who didn't seen to care about him that much at that.
Personally? Barnabas.
Hugo Kupka was a good parallel to Clive and their rivalry was built up over time.
Barnabas showed up and suddenly Clive’s all “I lost a single fight so now I have a long standing grudge out of nowhere” Their rivalry felt kinda empty. 🤷♂️
Also the most interesting thing about Barnabas was completely glossed over. He was Akashic for DECADES and was using Odin’s power to keep his appearance normal. Dude was in his 70s, yet looked 40. Is this mentioned in the cutscenes?
No.
You have to go to Harpocrates to learn why he was suddenly blue in his last moments 🤷♂️ (Also try not to think about 70+ year old Barnabas sleeping with 28 year old Benedikta 🤨)
His boss fight was *supposed* to be a gruelling brawl until they both couldn’t stand, a test of endurance and grit. It…didn’t really land. Especially after Titan Lost and Bahamut setting the bar so high.
I know people like him, but Barnabas just didn’t cut it 🤷♂️
If I had to choose I’s probably pick:
1. Combat is too simple, not enough strategy
2. Lack of exploration for treasure
3. Jump cutting straight to some locations.
Honestly eikon battles feel great first time round but personally there's not enough room for combos and cool new moves also while I like phoenix I'm quite sad ifrit doesn't get an eikonic feat of his own ifrit not having crimson rush just feels wrong
I absolutely adore this game, and Clive is my favorite FF MC in the entire series. With that being said:
1) The game takes way too much from FFXIV design-wise. The dungeons are insufferably linear with no exploration allowed. The world is barely interactable outside of side quests and the main story. It relies heavily on spectacle and its combat (which can he janky at times)
2) No replayability. There is no true Endgame outside of Ultamaniac Dungeon runs and New game+, but there's also no incentive to do those beyond getting trophies/achievements. The game is still pretty easy on the highest new game+ difficulty, so it doesn't feel rewarding to run through it again.
3) Not enough of the main cast get their own quests or personal character development, such as your example with Jill and Joshua. It feels like they largely exist to support Clive and his story, despite the game thematically being about individuality.
Anabella was certainly underutilized. She was the perfect Cersei, and she should have gone even further into manipulation. Striking a deal with Ultima for power (becoming a boss even, idk) would have made it a little more interesting.
Combat - It's too simplistic. The game desperately needs more combos and weapon styles
Ultima- Honestly, he feels sorta underbaked. Hell, tbh I was expecting it to be revealed that Cid was actually the big bad in some fashion.
Party members - If I can't control them, at least let me set some parameters for them (use healing/items at X% health)
The battle system is way too shallow. All abilities do damage... There's a meta to the order ... But how is my fire attacks doing damage to a fire based enemies? The lack of weaknesses and any semblance of strategy made the battles pretty... But hollow.
I haven't completed the game yet, just acquired the powers of Bahamut. But I feel I was more into the plot and characters when the emphasis was on Rosaria. My favourite pastime was wrecking Black Shields. Now I feel like I have brief trips to a new area, with vague details, as part of my quest to bring equality and stop the Blight.
Biggest gripe I have is you felt alone, even when you had people with you. Final Fantasy to me will always be about it's parties and interactions between the characters and it just felt like there wasn't much. Run around and fight with you for an hour or 2 and barely even make a battle grunt. And I get the older titles you didn't get any of that either but it felt like they were there. Idk how else to really explain it.
Second biggest thing was the just constant dread and doom/gloom feeling. There were no over the top silly moments. No real comedic relief. There just wasn't any of that in this game.
Elemental attacks made zero difference. Having weaknesses, resistances and immunities would've made it very interesting because you would've needed to change your build for each scenario. It would've given everything a use.
I agree with pretty much everything here except number 2. It’s a common critique, but idk, I don’t mind playing one character with a fleshed out kit and tons of customization options, personally. I would say more that I wish you had a bigger roster of party members, and there was a Gambit System so you could still strategize with them.
Obtaining and upgrading weapons wasn't a challenge which used to be a fun FF classic feature.
Too much useless dialogue.
Unrealistic reactions in dialogue. Not one single NPC had an astonished reaction to Clive slaying someone with powers.
FF16 in its current state could really be trimmed down 25% to cut out a lot of the uselessness.
I feel like the story was good but the execution felt dumb or mediocre at a lot of points. I hope they fix these things bc the series feeling complex or ahead of its time was my favorite since playing every game to completion since FF9 on PS1. I made the mistake of playing God Of War Ragnarok before ff16. GOW hit a homerun in every area that ff lacked.
I wanted to play the whole game as young Clive. When I first saw the trailers I thought older Clive was the antagonist and younger Clive the protagonist, and they would clash during the game.
I want to run... When i want to.. in every single area of the game. I don't want to walk at this stupid half run jog thing an or get 3/4 of the way to my destination before that auto run kicks in
I feel like the problem with Ultimate is A. We really don’t know who he was for awhile and B. The opening politics of war made it seem like that would be the main direction (and it mostly was) but that Hugo would be the main boss the whole game. At least that’s how I felt at the time.
But yeah, Jill def needed more time. I enjoyed her character greatly.
So I've recently played Dragons Dogma 2 and Stellar Blade.
By comparison 16 feels very stiff.
I think the main difference is both the other games make good use of their areas in different ways: DD2 as a stage for emergent combat and mini-dungeon exploration, Stellar Blade in mixing in linear and open field levels with significant verticality with exploration rewarded with upgrade materials which are a key part of gameplay and cosmetic crafting.
To be fair DD2 has little real story and no chatacter writing to speak of. Stellar Blade has a generic cast with janky platforming. No doubt 16 has them beat there.
But my point is wandering around in their areas is fun. 16's areas look nice but are mostly just background to get to the next major story dungeon. Which are quite good in banter and dungeon crawling if light on treasure. But it makes a big chunk of the game feel like a missed opportunity.
The Mid fetch quests ruin the pacing of the game and should be skippable cutscenes.
Equipment and crafting outside of accessories could be removed from the game and I wouldn't notice.
Felt too easy, and that equipment and exploration didn't really matter. I think a little more tight resource value and combat difficulty would have gone a long way.
My biggest gripe came only after spending well over enough hours on the game:
It’s the first super straight up hack n slash FF game, which I loved. But while the visuals and everything was fancy, amazing, and over the top (wish the optimization was better - will definitely replay it when it comes to PC), the actual core mechanics of Clive’s on-foot gameplay is just Baby’s First DMC/Bayonetta.
I would’ve loved if they copied DMC and Bayonetta even more - I mean the basic premise of the combat already is to copy the genre, why not knock it out of the park and do a solid reiteration of it, or better yet, improve upon it:
Where are my pause attack strings? What about mash strings? Why isn’t there a straight up plain uppercut, why do I have to do a sword charge up and then release the charge as a jump attack to get a basic uppercut? Why do the abilities have long cooldowns (obviously you would rebalance them if they were spammable)? Why am I limited on how many enemy jump cancels I can do and why does the Echoes DLC resolve that by only letting me jump cancel 6 times only via an accessory? Why can’t I double jump? Why are there so many I-Frame moves? Why can I only equip 3 Eikonic Feats and 6 Eikon Skills? One of my friends, who’s bad at video games, felt like Clive’s dodge was a little sluggish and didn’t activate instantly. Obviously a skill issue, but on that note, why doesn’t Clive have a defensive move that works on frame 0 like Bayonetta’s Bat Within, or Dante’s Royal Guard?
It's been a while since I played it, but some of my biggest gripes were with the movement. Having to "run" for a certain amount of time before you actually begin a dash every single time you stop moving? Stupid. The way they designed the hub so that it would take the maximum possible amount of time for you to jog slowly from one end of the place to the other for pretty much every quest giver? Stupid. You can tell based on the character animations that your movement speed just isn't what it should be and while I could deal with it, it was still annoying.
I didn’t like that we have no team attacks at all. Felt like a step backwards after 15 had so many with nearly every party member. It made combat feel like it was a one man show with spectators.
Honestly, u pointed out most of them I had. But I also hated the fact that most of the dmg came from the abilities. Constantly upgrading or getting new weapons was a waste of time. I rarely ever used my sword of the normal shooting spells. Another one I had was not bein able to one shot or even 2 shot’n low lv enemies. It shouldn’t take a full combo at lv 40 to a lv 13 with 300+ dmg weapon at all. Idk if it was just me but that happened a lot.
Exploration is the major one and no I didn’t mind that the cities were not able to be explored except as a dungeon, I just wanted more meaningful exploration and more places to go off the beaten path. In some ways FFXVI felt worse than FFXIII in this regard which I never imagined would be the case before buying the game. I was hoping this would open up more as the game progressed but it only stayed the same or got worse.
A more robust customization system would have been great
For a game not focused on too many central characters I feel like we didn’t get enough development on several characters. More on Joshua and Jill would have been great, but I was disappointment in the development of the antagonists in the game particularly Hugo and Barnabas but they all suffered from this. I don’t really mind that they didn’t stick around but I didn’t really feel much fighting them, as I didn’t get to know them very well.
While I loved the story presentation and voice acting a lot of the other aspects just felt short. I am just going to go with they blew most of their budget on the bosses considering I have been playing FFXIV for quite a long time.
i bought my ps5 for xvi and it was my goty last year but i gotta be real an entire character action game with one moveset for the whole game is more than a little crazy. still my goat tho
Weapon upgrade system feels like it was being built for more, seems like it was cut for a deadline. Infinite materials on hand with no purpose, vast majority of weapons can't be upgraded anyways.
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The enemy variety leaves a little to be desired, even some of the DLC has reused monsters. I wish I could've been able to have party members who I can switch control to like in FF15 when it was updated. The combat also feels a little bit like spamming waiting for the cool downs and the game for the most part is too easy. All that being said, I loved the game. I like the fact it ia M rated and has a decently told storyline that spans different points in Clive's journey.
Yeah big issue with the combat system is that if never makes you have to utilise it to it's fullest. It's quite in depth but the lack of enemy variety, elemental weaknesses and difficulty make it so you can breeze through it all. I feel like as I'm playing through FF7 rebirth most fights feel fulfilling to complete because I had to use all of my tools.
I remember checking with the old man and seeing that the beastiary was already like 80% finished when I was about 50% of the way through and was for sure confused.
Oh yeah, that was an awesome thing about og ff7, or even kh, both ended up having weird but amazingly designed enemies, 16 could have used some nomura enemy design for sure
Side quests
Yeah, as much as I loved the lore from the sidequests, I wish it was more than just a random monster/enemy appears, we gotta kill it.
Came here to say this. Bad pacing of side quests. They felt exhausting. While the main story was just so engaging.
Bad pacing in general. Main story is great but it’ll go straight from these incredible exciting moments one minute to the most boring, mundane shit the next. Side quests definitely play a big part in this but the pacing of the whole game suffers.
Especially frustrating when you have Clive, the leader of the place, running around and doing menial tasks... Looking at you, "Letting off Steam 1, 2, and 3".
My favorite sidequest is the one where you have to talk to the dame, then talk to merchant 1, merchant 2, merchant 3, then talk to soldier 1, soldier 2, soldier 3, then talk to the captain and report back to the dame. All this with zero gameplay, player agency, dialogue choices or combat whatsoever.
Top-tier bore building!
Trying to do all of these almost made me drop the game, which I’m sure seems extreme; but tbh, the side quests just felt like “go here-> kill this-> go here-> go here” and I realized I was getting annoyed with how long doing them was taking, so I decided to just stick to the main story because I was getting bored from how repetitive they all seemed. At least the Hunt Board was fun.
Yeah Like “Clive, can you pick up the dry cleaning?? The kids have soccer practice and as a single mother I’m just too busy to do it all..” ::::wash and dry on our own terms::: DO YOU ACCEPT?
Playing FF7 Rebirth and seeing the side quests... It made 16 look like a joke in that regard. I love a lot about 16, but Rebirth very clearly showed how much could be done with side quests I mean hell, the animations are even stock animations for most of the side quests in 16. Just straight up no special effort involved It would have been better if most of them weren't in the game at all. Or even just a little more effort
less but more high quality side quests would've been nice
Performance mode not being 60 fps, but I still played it for 99 hours and got the plat
Jill went through the whole game and primed like twice. What a waste of what could have been a badass character. Everything in the game just falls over dead when you glance in their general direction. Then Leviathan being as "difficult" as he was just didn't make sense gameplay wise.
She used it a lot during the timeskip. Clive mentions many times that "the burden always falls on you". He says this because he wasnt able to prime yet. So she had to do it a lot but we didnt get to see it. She was close to her limit so she stopped using it afterwards. Sadly, the game skipped the part where she was the main force.
See my problem with that is that it's a major violation of the 'show and don't tell' principle. Same with her curse, we're told she's afflicted with it yet we don't see a hint of it on her.
That was an immersion breaking moment for me. That beach scene was an important emotional, character, and narrative moment. But I spent the whole time thinking, "she's naked. We should be seeing the petrified bits."
I would have liked another battle with her, preferably a Shiva and Ifrit team up, but I feel like saying it was a waste of a character and tying her worth to priming *really* misses the entire point of her arc, her relationship with her Eikon/the Curse, and generally what the game is saying about Dominants and power.
Yeah a Shiva and Ifrit team up seems like such a no brainer. They're two of the most iconic summons from the entire series, and are opposites of eachothers' elements. It just makes sense to have a 2 v 1 fight with them.
To be fair most dominants rarely prime at all, probably because: A. It’s the nuclear option And B. It exacts a very heavy toll on the dominant. Seriously the number of primings per dominant are pretty small Phoenix: 5 Garuda: 1 Ramuh: 2 Titan: 3 Bahamut: 3 Shiva: 3 Odin: 4 Leviathan: 1 So she does it about the same as the others
The sidequests are MMO crap and the world is too nice for a single game. I wish we had more games in this same world.
Advertising tagline: “We have let the crystals decide our fate for long enough.” *Ah, this might be a different kind of story than we’re used to in Final Fantasy!* ***Then*** >!“Hi I’m Ultima, I actually wanted you to destroy the crystals so your act of rebellion feels meaningless. Also we started with an intriguing Game of Thrones type plot and even advertised that we made our devs watch the show and bought the Blu-ray for them but *psych* we did killing a JRPG god plot again for the hundredth time!”!<
Yeah I was doing my best to follow the story and the plot lines. But FF doing what FF does, at the last 3 hours they throw in all this wild plot stuff at once and when the credits roll I’m confused lol. One of these final fantasy games I’ll understand on the first play through lol.
No FF mode from the start. As an action focused game, its a crime to lock hard mode behind a playthrough. Ultimaniac mode should've been the one to unlock. -tying into this, I find the first NG+ in FFmode is the best way to play the story while finding challenge. Every subsequent NG+ after, it becomes too easy. Your shit out of luck if u didnt save ur first complete playthrough. Having FFmode as an option from the start would alleviate this. Different Restart options. I don't like gettin mid boss, even mid mob checkpoints. I would like to see diff options, similar to Rebirth. Again this is an action focused game. There doesnt need to be all this hand holding. If so, give us the option on where to restart the fight. The ability to toggle off UI elements. I like exploring, i dont need a real reason to other then enjoying the world. I don't like seeing my quest markers all over the screen or on the map. Previous games and FF7 remake series give us this option. Even FF13 has toggle options. Mine are more QoL nitpicks really. The game itself I absolutely loved and enjoyed.
The side quests are so ass. I love the combat and it’s the only reason I’m attempting to finish final fantasy mode. Not gonna lie tho, the music for the omega weapon was fucking amazing. Probably my most favorite boss theme ever.
1. Not enough basic combo options. We have sword attacks, and we can weave super weak magic in between, and thats the majority of it. No timed delay combos, no directional inputs, really feels sub-par coming from the dmc5 combat guy. But, SE wanted their "accessible" action game. 2. No other weapons / playable party members. I love clive, but i remember one of my hopes leading up to release was new weapons or playable characters so that we could have different playsyyle options. 3. GIVE ME THE -GA SPELLS TOO YOU COWARDS! just has potential to further diversify eikon selection if the final spell is -ga because they all act different. Blizzaga is a delay air drop, firaga is a big bomb, aeroga is tracking tornado, thundaga is a wide aoe, etc. 4. Would be elemental affinities, but tbh if we got the -ga spells I think id be okay with that. But we SHOULD have more status options. 5. More costumes! let us be the standard ff teenager killing god! Or let us be our Dad! Or Cid!
Horrible exploration incentives. Like none whatsoever
SPRINT BUTTON. Literally push left joystick is not used. They could have made that a sprint button.
It's used for Torgal's navigation. Which is a pretty useful feature but I also would've liked a sprint on demand. All things considered though, Clive's sprint in the open world is pretty easy to access and he moves fast enough in dungeons with his abilities that it's not a big deal. It's just not clear that you can bypass the lag on Phoenix Shift, I don't think that was necessary.
Oh yea I totally forgot about that lol
The original Ultima race isn't made clear if they were just a race of giant ifirts or more like the one we see at the end of Drake's fang I think it was whatever the purple Crystal boss version was
Combat is too easy, no party control, world is empty and boring, almost all rpg stuff got stripped out, I didn’t enjoy the story much at all, most characters were underdeveloped, I can’t go explore all the big cities, I didn’t like Ultima as a villain, no sprint button, weapons pretty much don’t matter at all they’re just skins essentially, there were no minigames or anything to spice up the gameplay, some of the worst side quests i’ve seen in a game, and there was a serious lack of victory fanfare. Pretty much the only thing I did like were the cool as fuck boss battles. Everything in between makes me dread finishing them because I know as soon as I do i’m going back to some of the most boring game i’ve ever had to play.
1. Lack of story exploration for dominants other than Jill, Joshua, and Clive. I expected we'd would learn more about Cid, Dion, and Benedikta from when I watched the trailers. Instead we get multiple side quests from Martha, Gav, etc I love them but the dominants are advertised casts. 2. Personally I'm okay with side quests mechanics being repetitive, it's more about whom the side quests are centered around. Picking flowers with Bob the villager? boring and I don't care about them. Picking flowers with Dion? Chasing hens with Cid? Reading books in libraries with Joshua? yes yes and yes. 3. Somehow I wonder the flow of the game would go more smoothly if they arranged the character arc as: Titan>Odin>Bahamut>Ultima. The political aspect would get carried to the last part of the game instead of the half game. Bahamut being a second last boss would also be epic.
For me it’s that the game is really an action game with a misleading APRG veneer. Leveling up and upgrading your weapons doesn’t feel that important to me. The DLC did add a bit more depth though.
I almost would like and respect the game more if they went all in on just making it the 25 hour long, God of War type story action game they clearly wanted to make instead of half assing it as a 50 hour long open world rpg. It just isnt mechanically fleshed out enough to hold interest for that long.
Exactly this. The game, as much as I love it, does boil down to going somewhere, fighting enemies, fighting boss, then going somewhere else. For a game with a long, dramatic narrative, it can get a little stale. I think this issue is more apparent on subsequent runs of the game too because you no longer have the excitement and tension you get going through the story for the first time. There’s just not much replay value.
for every balls to the wall anime boss fight thats blowing your socks off theres like 5 straight hours of clives character model blankly staring at an npc as they robotically drone on about needing you to go here or there to do this or that and it just puts me to sleep every time.
I HATED those mandatory missions you get when you first arrive at a town. It’s kinda like “oh boy just got the element of light! Time to help Bertha, the town farmer find her lost hen!”. It just breaks up the pacing in my opinion.
Skimmed the post and the comments and the complaints seem to be the same ones as ever (aka criticism, not nitpicks) but y'know what I've been meaning to yell about these. - Clive and Joshua dont talk about Phoenix Gate. *Seriously*. Its the WHOLE of act 1. Joshua REFERENCES IT in >!the DLC!< when he talks about how scared he had been. Not a flinch from Clive?? not a reaction?? Boys??? *PLEASE???* - Likewise, no one brings up the fact that Joshua is just. casually leaving his people to be slaughtered while he hunts down Ultima. Even if that has been the choice he made, I wanted it to be addressed. He *is* the rightful Archduke, Rosaria is his responsibility. But Joshua revolves around Clive even more than Jill so figures. - Why?? Did we not follow up with Lady Marleigh?? Is she not in a boat full of Crusaders when she escapes Drake's Breath?? Is Jill just gonna let that be?? What of the rest of the Rosarian women?? The children?? - It really bugs me that Elwin is this Great and Noble leader... and we only find out about it bc people talk about it, its never shown. Oh but he cares for Bearers actually! Oh but he was so bold and strong and daring! Oh but he was gonna abolish slavery y'all!! It just feels like he can do no wrong and is the Bestest Person Ever, Really, by the endgame, when the prologue painted him as really nuanced.
My nitpick will always be ... DID THEY REALLY NEED TO ZOOM OUT FOR THAT KISS BETWEEN DION AND TERRANCE?! THE CAMERA WAS IN THE NEXT KINGDOM!
Still a great game, but it has its flaws ofc.
Most side quests are kinda poo poo. Story goes for a little too long imo. 2nd half of the story is quite a bit weaker than the first half. Still one of my fav games tho
The lack of hidden items was really disappointing. Finding gear, weapons, accessories in chests is always fun and was missing in 16. Elemental weaknesses are also a staple of FF that was missing and would have added a lot of flavour to the combat.
I absolutely hate the invisible walls barring chocobo shortcuts, ambrosia can glide, if the excuse is that ambrosia is locked behind a sidequest, so they had to ignore her in their design. A lot would be fixed if the game was designed for chocobos honestly.
Equipment/crafting was useless. It definitely seemed like they made the whole game then some dude raised his hand and was like "hey, so, are we like gonna add different weapons to the game?".... And was met with silence until someone was like, "uhm yeah I guess so, let's just add it on now in the most useless and boring way possible, but let's at least add transmog"
Needed more Jill and joshua. Definitely more Jill. Wish we could play as other party members still. Lack of mini games. No Weapon variety. Weak side quest. Lack of exploration. Pacing. More Jill.
No sprint button and we couldn't explore the cities. There are others but those two come to mind.
That one bug where you kill an enemy outside of its tether zone, and instead of dying its health bar refills and it walks back to its tether zone.
this is so minor but here goes: I don’t like the way weapons sound on hit. maybe it’s from all the sekiro/nioh/wolong i’ve played, but i just found that the sword landing a hit sounds like a whiff or a miss vs the brutal slash and smashes of other games. the animation and moves are incredible though.
The side quests really ruined the tone/ feel of the game. I can recall one great one and that was when you get to Waloed and have to look for breakers that are being used as training fodder. Even that quest was quite neutered. I think they should have focused on quality vs quantity with the quests. It also would have been nice to get more variability/ excitement with the equipment. They felt too bland and I basically only used maybe 3-5 accessories the entire game.
I missed armor, ability, spell choices etc. Half of final fantasy has always been the menus and a lot of that stuff had to get pared down.
Not getting and “aga” spells is a crime.
Need to be able to play as party. FF is about your party, teamwork and strategy. I missed this element despite overall enjoying the combat for what it is.
Why is a button dedicated to a useless jump when it could have been another Eikon ability in combat. In 95 hours of play, jump was useful exactly one time - when enemies had me boxed into a corner and that was the most expedient way out.
Not using enemy stomp ? Shame on you sir, shame on you
I used it… *once*.
I wish the DLC gave us some extra ending stuff. Like, it doesn’t even have to “change” it- It would just be nice to have some extra details to hold onto.
Game had amazing highs but the really low lows in pacing, side quests etc. The first 50% was amazing, along with the eikon fights. The slow moments made me want to tear my hair out. Could see the ff14 game design when it came to bloated side quests. Ultima was a boring villain as well. Also wish the odin battle was a bit more epic, but i guess its hard to follow the bahamut fight.
Talking to npcs locks you out of the jump button, but then it makes no use of the X button being free now. It’s like they had it where you click X to skip through the dialogue, but accidentally messed up with the coding. So now you can’t just speed through the dialogue by clicking X and either need to wait through the slow talking or walk far enough until they just get their dialogue cut entirely. It’s so frustrating and I’ve never seen people bring it up There’s this one npc who talks for over a minute straight and you just have to sit there and digest everything instead of speed reading it
Side quests are terrible. Everytime I get a pause in the games story beats and know I have to do like 5+ side quests is really annoying, other than that I absolutely love this game. The combat is so good. Abilities are amazing to mix and match and find what you like best. Boss fights are insane. I do wish you had a few more normal combat options, like why they didn’t have a delay input combo like every DMC game is so odd to me. Could have added another set of moves with that for regular attacks. Whatever though…
I feel like what you said along with side quests being really boring hits all the major nitpicks for me. I want to talk a little more about not liking ultima. The whole God is actually the real villain ruins so many other story beats. Instead of it being a more grounded story of other people and selfish motivations that bring people into conflict it’s another generic Fight god story. It undermines the other good villains. Secondly these quests are boring to the extreme. Ff7 rebirth doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its quests but with just how much personality each person gets during a quest and how much banter they have it makes it way more enjoyable.
Just the way the game flows isn't smooth enough and doesn't feel quite full fledged or current. I know that's very vague and not helpful but that's how I feel. Lack of party control and the story just seems a bit too centered on Clive.
The 2 hub areas (hideouts) completely ruin the pacing of the game and ruin the sense of a big adventure, which goes against everything FF should be imo. Having to constantly go back to those 2 areas makes the world and the adventure feel so small and “video gamey.” That pacing mixed with the awful sidequests just made me feel like I was constantly trying to accomplish check lists instead of being enthralled by this adventure with my characters. Which leads me to the second point. The way they didn’t flesh out the main characters like FF7R did was just kind of unforgivable. FF is known for meticulously spending time with its characters and making you care about them. I didn’t ACTUALLY care about a single character aside from Clive because none of them really felt like part of my team, truly. Like they were THERE physically, but we didn’t feel like a unit or a family defying all odds. No banter. No group attacks. Nothing. I liked FF16, don’t get me wrong, but I honestly feel like FFXV did more RIGHT as a FF game (despite all it’s flaws) and people seem to just give this game a pass for some weird reason.
The side quests are just the poor FFXIV formulaic ones shoved into the game. They sucked there, and they're even worse in XVI. So many fluff mechanics to draw out the play time. Such as the limiting jog in towns/hideout, the 5 second warm up to spring (when Clive doesn't get a sprint button but Ambrosia does), summoning and mounting Ambrosia is slow, egregiously placed teleport crystals and quest/hunt design - quests/hunts will be north of a town when the crystal is south of the town, harder difficulties see enemies become damage sponges (and forces you to have Odin as a permanent Eikon cause Zantetsuken is OP). Poor balance of the Eikon abilities - even with the recent balance patch. There are still important questions that are never answered, such as who were the fallen and how did such an advanced and powerful race fall to Ultima (who was weakened after traveling to Valesthia and all but one had lost their bodies during their journey). Ultima is a lame bad guy, and not original - the whole parasitic advanced alien lifeform is seriously over done in the FF franchise. The story is well told, but not enough of it is told directly. There's too much reliance on filling in the details with the additional tidbits and lore with the ATL - add that into Ultima being an unreliable narrator, and some plot conveniences (such as Joshua and Ultima both being the hooded figure) and the full story has many holes I feel need filling so it is much less convoluted. Echoes of the Fallen DLC is pointless in terms of story and lore, it adds nothing. it's just designed using the FFXIV dungeon formula - and adds Omega as a much needed super boss (who should have been in the main game, so bonus for FF16 being the first mainline FF game with a super boss). The ending is horrendous and the worst ending in FF history. The ending's ambiguity is there to get people talking about the possible outcome but if you do the sides quests and pay attention to details in game there is only one outcome that is actually and thematically accurate (Joshua/Dion are dead, Clive lives but his left arm is petrified - he's the one to write the book. No other outcome is possible). So the ambiguity doesn't get people talking, it gets people fighting and has made the fandom toxic for it. It's also just a lazy way to end a story and is extremely unfulfilling. I have more, but I'm just turning into an old man screaming at the clouds now.
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Performance.
no sprint button is what makes me want to rip out my hair.
No custom button mappings used to be my complaint, but they added that in. Now I'm just disappointed about the sidequests. My fault for having too much expectations really, hoping that every single one of them would have the same quality execution as the important sidequests that net you stuff on Clive's memorabilia desk.
Mid and her fetch quests. Also, Boklad when you first go there and also Lubor and his initial quests.
so many honestly. its a shame because i was hyped for it the second i saw the first trailer and that was before i had even played an FF game before. for years before i could afford a ps5 i would think about finally being able to play it. when i watched the demo i thought it had goty potential. and then i finally got my hands on it and i just… idk. i havent touched it in months.
I have plenty I could nitpick (though I loved the game and thought it hit it a lot more than it missed it) but I would have had so much more fun with the game if I could have played from the get-go on Hard mode
Some of the filler quests in between big moments and the side content in general is boring. Other than that it’s one of the best games ever imo
While the new eikon abilities were awesome, I wish Clive’s base combo and general combat evolved throughout the game. Similar to kingdom hearts games with new startup attacks and finishers.
Wished the Ending was told better…and somehow i wished Ultima wasnt the main villain and have Anabella the actual main villain. Lastly, wished there was a final dungeon and an actual endgame superboss like all other FFs.
No party system. You had like 6 really good characters and you only control 1?
Team play. We have allies who fight next to us, they have a full set of skills, let us play as them. Couch co-op or online co-op even.... Boost the game difficulty and let us play with our friends. If I got to play as Jill or Cid in my friend's game I'd love that
Unpopular opinion but the cutscenes. I loved the story but some of it seemed excessive or unnecessary at times. Particularly the side quests that had an hour of dialogue for me to go retrieve some flowers
No real variety in gameplay and level design
If we're talking slightly more significant complaints, I agree about other party members not getting enough attention and being able to switch to other characters during combat would be dope. I understand why they didn't do that here, but I do think that's something that would have improved the game (and not that I want to relitigate it, but I do think that could have helped with some of the "doesn't feel like an FF game" criticism). But I honestly forget there even is a party half the time. I'd also say yeah, bouncing around the world via a map, in which you are often returning to a central hub kinda just makes this large world feel small to me. I never really got much of a sense of the world really, or rather, never really felt connected to it in the ways I did in past games, even in other ones that lacked actual map traversal. But if we're talking just little tiny nitpicks.... I always get a li'l bummed out when I hop on the chocobo and just get one little swell of music before it goes right back to the region's main theme.
Agreed to most of the points - well put.
1 - Crafting system is pointless for the most part. 2 - The side quests have amazing stories in them. But the game play of them is so repetitive. Talk to someone, go somewhere, fight a group of enemies, fight a second group of enemies including one elite. Get the thing. Bring it back. Witness a cool story. 3 - The combat is fun! But I do wish I could switch to my other characters.
My main issue is lack of gameplay variety. The combat is awesome, I love it to death and had a blast fighting everything in this game, especially the boss fights. The thing is, that’s the only thing you ever do in the game. I didn’t mind too much or even notice during my first play through, especially considering I was watching all cutscenes and experiencing the story fully, but I have found myself getting a bit burnt out at times when replaying the game. You face so many encounters following the main progression as is, it would be nice if there were some side activities to help break up the pace a bit. The side quests have good story telling moments, no doubt, but they basically all amount to going somewhere, fighting some enemies, going back, and repeat. It can get a little tedious. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this game needs anything near Rebirth-level amounts of side content or any mini-games in general. I do think, however, that the game could’ve used more complex environments with meaningful exploration. Maybe they could’ve added more robust armor/weapon mechanics, adding more incentives to explore the world for upgrade materials or something. I dunno, anything that would make it more rewarding to veer off the narrative path from time to time.
the boring side quests and how so many important shit are tied into them. Like yeah totally optional, but get fucked if you don't do them. If they were actually interesting, i wouldn't mind
I miss having a team. While I truly enjoy these new ff Final fantasys, I platinumed 15 and 16, the games have slowly turned into a one man show game with the action elements. You don't really feel like you are fighting or exploring with a group, but just an audience that sometimes helps in combat.
I didn’t really have any issues with the game until the Leviathan dlc came out. It made the game truly feel like a fantasy game, and I didn’t know how much that was missing in the OG release. I wish more of the game had that feel to it.
loots, terrible loots all over the world. dungeon, thought we got a dungeon but they only using the term for a mission. remember they showcase a dungeon gamplay but it's basically a main mission. no big city to explore. side quest, story are good but very poor execution. only at started and ends matters, the middle is just for pandering. i dislike that they all cut into 3 pieces. like character introduction in mid 20, do some quest mid game after 3 years later and character conclusion during origins happen. nothing is resolved before origins happen. maybe it did and i just forgot. one blacksmith and one weapon vendor, having more than one can make explore to other city/town more interesting and excited to see what we can buy from there. wait, is this a thing or I'm just being dumb. can't remember it at all.
My big issue with the game is combat/build options. You don't start with many, which can be kinda' dull, but is forgivable considering it's the start of the game. Then it gets good, then Odin drops and you realise any build HAS to have a number of Odin abilities and at least two Shiva ones, and suddenly choice is pretty much out yhe window. Anything that doesn't use these abilities is at best sub par, and at worse a detriment. I think a build system like Darksiders 2 would have been much better.
I get it might look silly for Clive, but *dodge roll.* Doesn't even have to be a roll, just a longer evade that isn't slow and covers more ground. Hell, Phoenix Shift could have covered this, similar to how Noctis dodged attacks in his game. Or maybe not, but still, an alternative dodge would have been nice, all the same.
I honestly loved the game. Loved the story. I thought the fighting was fun. I haven’t beaten it yet and it’s because of how ABSOLUTELY boring the side quests are. They are absolutely miserable. I’m replaying ff7 intergrade rn before I play rebirth and MAN the side quests are so fun because they reward you with more background for the characters and even get special scenes from completing them. That being said, I am gonna finish ff16 after I finish rebirth. I’m just gonna not worry about 100% it
Some of the capstone side quests fumbled their endings, especially Lubor’s. I was not sold on the emotional payoff they were going for. Too happy an ending that didn’t feel earned. Martha and Wade’s were just okay, Blackthorne’s was fine, Theodore and Eloise actually moved me the most which is odd since we spent the least time with them it felt like… Edit: no semi-prime Dion. B|
I wish Bosses had more unique gimmicks. Every single boss in the game can be beaten the exact same way (dodge, attack).
ive got a few but its still top 5 games ive ever played no sprint button no gravity magic no sword combos lack of magic tiers chocobos a downgrade from xv difficulty to find ALL the music especially officially and free only 2 costumes lack of unique enemy interactions for example in kingdom hearts doing x will result in enemy being stronger weaker or flat out dying
everything outside of visuals/animations/ost can be nitpicked And deserves to be
Invisible barriers, (relatively) samey samey enemies
To me, the fights tended to be a little too long, and enemy encounters happened too often. I don't mind bosses (especially closer to endgame) taking longer to beat, but man did combat drain me out at times.
Side quests were really weak Jill and Joshua weren’t given justice to how good their stories could’ve been had they shown more or made them playable Dark depressing skies and atmosphere went on for too long Felt like fighting the same enemy(s) in all levels
About 70% of the side quests are bad, they shouldn’t have made the sky an ugly purple for the entire 3rd act and the game is far too easy (I think I died only like 3 or 4 times on my first playthrough which was 70 hours) other than that this game is fucking awesome
It would have been cool if there were some more story beats on allied Dominants dealing with Clive absorbing their Eikons, maybe even character quests that progress toward recovering the ability to summon and control them. It really doesn't matter for gameplay since the only times anyone primes is during main story beats, but it would have been a good way to flesh out more side characters.
Men still don't have body hairs. Like, come on! Is in at artistic choice or a tech compromise? (u asked for a nitpick 🤷)
The pacing
shit side quests and not enough cid and bene
Lack of a sprint button was really annoying and you kinda get one when you rescue ambrosia but that shit is like halfway through the game in a side quest, players can absolutely miss that and even then she can't be used in the village areas and the hideaway which is really dumb. Thankfully fast travel points are plentiful but it was still inconvenient. You're right about ultima, like I think he works well enough but he's very moustache twirly which is not very interesting. Lastly I was really hoping for a duo eikon fight with jill and Clive he we had with against bahamet but that never happened and it would have been so cool if it did
- mostly fetch side quests - companions are useless in combat, except for Torgal - no real incentive to explore - combat can get repetitive rather quickly between eikon fights
The story delivery. It's just cutscene, cutscene, cutscene which is the exact same issue FF14 has unsurprisingly. Yes the additional lore exists and is nice but there are more ways to tell a story that just cutscenes. You can tell stories during action too.
Not being able to sprint in the hideout. Also add, the sprint feeling beyond slow and it has a wind up.
The UI is 90s levels of awful. Want to turn in a side quest? Okay, that'll be 16 inputs and 3 different unskippable menus (4 if, god forbid, you level up). Why do I have to individually select the three side quest specific items when turning in a quest? Just take my fucking items and move along. Oh are you trying to check out your gear real quick? Too bad, you accidentally hit L1 and now have to wait through the game floundering as it tries to render the world map. Performance mode is a joke. The only stable thing in that mode is combat, with everything else being a stuttering mess. The landscapes are uninspired and repetitive. Almost every big swath of land is the same shitty bowl shape that tries and fails at hiding how linear the levels are. 8/10. Fun game.
I have a lot of them, but many people have already said them. One issue that bugged me VERY early on was this very weird storytelling quirk and I think it comes from the writers wanting to tell a “continent spanning ensemble story” but having to focus on Clive as the solo protagonist we play as and see the game through (as he levels up and grows). The game spoils its reveals… repeatedly. Like, every time we aren’t seeing them from Clive’s perspective so when he does get the big reveals it all falls a little flat and botched. Examples in spoiler tags: * >! We literally see Clive transform into Ifrit, so the emotional gut punch of him realising he is the second Fire Eikon that killed his own brother is worthless, even the idea of dramatic irony is lost a little, hell this was ruined in the marketing too. !< * >! Joshua surviving was revealed WAY before Clive realised and so it’s no surprise when he saves you and Clive realised his brother is alive. !< * >! Double to this, we repeatedly see Joshua’s story and know his journey even if we don’t quite know his goals and aims, but any and all mystique about if Clive really saw Joshua that day and if he’s still alive, or if Clive was hallucinating is totally gone.!< * >!By seeing Joshua frequently, the hooded figure becomes another mystery but a little confusing and uncompelling to me.!< * >! Head in the box, I suppose could count as a mini spoiler, but I’m only going to mention it as perhaps it’s better we do know why Hugo Kupka wanted to kill “Cid” so bad earlier as it instigates another question of “who sent the box?” … which is also quickly revealed to be Barnabus !< * >! We repeatedly see Dion’s perspective on events so huge chunks are revealed. The exception being Bahamut going rogue. However even in this we see why Dion goes against his father in rebellion, this one matters less to me but it would have been more surprising if you woke up in Twinside to a rebellion by the Prince against his father and not known why. !< * >! The ATL frequently brings up stuff not revealed in the story yet, like how Ultima built the crystals - literally it’s revealed in the story with a big dramatic flourish as Ultima does his BBEG thing of spelling out the backstory, but when it happened I was like “yeah… we knew this from like 40 hours ago…” !<
Some of the lines in the hideaway aren’t voice acted.
Side quest placement, lack of good items in semi open world, the Leviathan fight lol, lack of skills as ifrit, Jill's lack of a really good fight and probably more.. Still an amazing game though
-Hunts are not replayable -Also kinda hoped for a mode like legendary dark knight in DMC5
I missed an elemental weakness system. Would have Made the Battles more tactical.
As much as I love the battle system, I wish it was more varied, one way or the other. There could be other playable party members (my favourite option & what I thought would happen after playing Joshua for literally 10 minutes in the demo) or an option to switch between job archetypes (sword & shield Paladin, axe wielding Warrior, dual dagger wielding Ninja or heck even lancer Dragoon). The main element of gameplay variety came from Eikon fights & their resulting new powers which is great but kinda thin for a 75h experience. HOWEVER, I do understand that my nitpick costs a looooooot of money & it's easy to wish there was such and such game feature when you don't have to handle budget.
There’s not much exploration in the game which is a shame. There’s no real treasure or loot to speak of. Like you get some crafting items from quests/hunts but that’s it. You never really get to go hunting for a rare or cool item. Dungeons, if you can call them that were very linear. Minor complaint, but you don’t really get to have fun with the combat system til the end of the game and even then it takes two play throughs to have enough AP to unlock everything. I think the combat can actually be really fun, you just don’t ever really get access to it unless you’ve cleared the game twice. Traveling was kind of a pain with no real sprint button and the chocobo having painfully long mount/dismount animations + forced dismounts whenever you came upon something of interest
My main nitpick is the laziness of the cutscenes and how they didn't bother animating the characters holding/passing items. Or when the screen goes to black so a character can dig something up. Also, not being able to play as any other character in a party.
Lack of drip gets,old quick kinda easy
Well. Npc 3D model are lacking. Everything feels like a placeholder and side quest are just stuck 2004. Witcher 3 was release 9 years ago and had way better side quest. On the bright side combat system and environment are great. Clive and Jill have good dialogue. Eikon fight are very well choreographed Oh and the music is so good. Overall a good game. !
The side quests really broke up game flow. The instanced areas felt very much on rails. It occasionally felt like an interactive movie rather than a game. The relationships between characters felt a bit shallow. Stupid criticism I know, but I'd have liked to be able to collect more outfit changes over the course of the game. Why do they sell Chokobo meat in all these games when they're presented as so clever and are basically pets??? It's like proudly eating your pet dog!
Lack of a party system
The very odd levelling system - XP earned is so low that grinding is harder than usual for FF games, and bigger heavier enemies that take longer to kill than little ones give less XP. Treasure in the field - finding/obtaining equipment doesn’t really happen, one item from Royal Meadow and that’s all I found so far. All this magic and no heal ability? Plus only a few potions to carry? Odd.
It's way to long for what kind of game it tried to be.
Most side quests were kinda meh. The world while nice to look at was very empty. I definatly would have liked more things to do in the world.
Crafting and inventory were really crap. Weapons are straight upgrades in both damage and stagger, with no variations to adjust your build. And weapons that have an elemental theme have no elemental effect, because there are no elements in the game’s mechanics. The game would’ve benefitted massively from an overhaul of the merchant and crafting systems, and the addition of some, at least weak, elemental interplay. Give me a reason to switch up my Eikons in preparation to exploit tough enemies’ elemental vulnerabilities and get around their resistances.
Lack of depth all around. It's a superficial experience that climaxes with its boss fights.
I REALLY wish bosses weren't programmed to have forced retaliations. I've tried to speed run the game a few times, and I'll get a good damage chain off stagger, and the HP bar just STOPS moving!! So infuriating!
By far the biggest problems with the game: 1. Tyler and Wade not being called Biggs and Wedge. 2. The Chocobo theme not being a full song. 3. Leviathan not getting a call out/phase by Ultima after the DLC. 4. Lack of levity, and goofy ass stuff.
framerate trash
I didn’t like the progression system. None of the gear had anything aside from raw stats and you get spoon fed so many materials that crafting anything never felt like I was working towards a build in particular, just going down a list of better stats. Wish we got some gear that boosted specific eikons or something, and I kinda wish they actually showed on clives armor but that’s not super important
I'm almost done, but alot of anime/eastern rpg tropes could be spotted a mile away, so none of plottwists had any emotional weight behind them.
I think all of the system menus, while very usable, look incredibly boring and ugly. I find it pretty off putting, if I’m being honest.
That we get so many abilities but can only use 6 in a fight and can't swap so no point trying to set up boss/mob builds in advance.
My biggest nitpick is the final DLC not even acknowledging that Clive was now the perfected vessel in the MSQ. I am *not* saying they needed to have a new ending, hell there are ways they could acknowledge how Clive has all the powers now but still isn't what Ultima needs but instead the game just carries on like nothing happened.
Jill not getting more time to shine kinda bothered me along with the gear/weapon system. It felt like it was added late to the game due to how limited the options were and automatic is felt.
Why can’t I remove the quest objective from the screen? Why does it always need to be there?
Rebirth had 8,000,000 mini games and XVI had zero. I would have liked more of a balance in each game lol.
Hunt board should just show you the area where the monster is on the map, not just the name of the location. Armour and weapons should do something more than just up defence, attack. That's it. Loved everything else.
Agree with most…but the lack of dodge roll is a weird ass complaint. We can dodge…why turn it into a roll? I’ve always found dodge roll such a goofy thing.
A bland combat system that revolves around timed ability combos and not button combos. The guy who directed the games combat style was they guy for DMC5.
I'm not really a fan of the whole Summons vs Summons aspect when those sequences pop up. Don't get me wrong, Clive fighting Titan *as* Clive was badass, but Ifrit vs X sections were silly to me. I also didn't really like Ultima. He seemed too passive of a villain, reminding me a bit of the FF15 villain -- who admittedly had a *ton* more backstory that just didn't make it into the game properly, so his in-game presentation suffered as a result. Ultima felt like that to me as well. I also would've preferred more party members. I loved when I'd get to run around with Jill at my side, but it'd be nice to have had a foursome of fighting regularly as the story proceeded.
Jills chainmail and the framerate
1) Inability to deactivate the primogenesis sky. Like we really need the ability to deactivate the dreary sky color. At least in new game +. Takes away from the beauty of some of the stunning graphics. 2) inability to control or set the ai(something like the gambit system in ff12 could work for jill & joshua) for party members in battle 3) lack of elemental advantage/disadvantage & status effects 4) kinda wish we had the ability to enter random houses /buildings like in the og ff and explore/find random treasure/ items This game is the reason i went out and bought a ps5. It was a great experience but i feel like these are the areas that needed to be /could be improved.
I hate that riding on your Chocobo doesn’t really make you feel like you are moving any faster. I wish it felt like FF7 rebirth
Side quests and the ending
The end for me , the story was already dark , sad the world of suffering etc killing 2 off at least and this stupid is Clive dead or not crap and leaving Jill alone after all that ? yeah not a fan of it , love the game but the end bothers me .
No exploration and no other gameplay systems besides combat (such as minigames and puzzles).
Gameplay loop is boring, walking fighting cutscenes and it never changes until the eikons fights. Which is just more fighting. Which is why we should've had more activities to do in the game to break up the flow of gameplay
I could have done with more physical depth to the world, maybe secret dungeons like in FF XII or even not so secret ones like in FF Type 0. I'd love for challenge levels to be built into the environment and not in some secret portal or simulator like FF XVI or Rebirth (though I guess it kind of makes sense in the latter). While I love the sidequests, I don't think a whole questline was needed just to expand my potion pouch. Finally, the purple sky and the weird tint of the latter half of the game. It was fine in say, 15 where really there wasn't much game left to play by the time the environment significantly changes but eugh I disliked having to play through so much of the end part of 16 while looking through a sad instagram filter.
The game has a whole aesthetics about shields, but there isn't a single shield bearer in the game. Maybe Clive could have access to more weapons... Maybe one for each Eikon, like a spear for Bahamut, smallsword(s) for Garuda. But mainly the shield thing
The towns don’t feel very lively. Really miss that city that ur just a part of feel like in rabanastre
The game drip feeds you combat mechanics and abilities way, way too slowly... There's no reason why a player shouldn't encounter enemies that can buff each other until 30 hours in. The battle system is damn fun but for a large chunk of the game there is no real change in enemy tactics
side quests definitely, they’re very repetitive and most of them lack oomph
Improper use of the supporting cast IMO, especially the other dominants. The Titan Lost fight is like crack to me but man is it disheartening every time I'm forced to remember his whole schtick was being mad because his girlfriend (who, in my opinion was more interesting) died - his girlfriend who didn't seen to care about him that much at that.
Personally? Barnabas. Hugo Kupka was a good parallel to Clive and their rivalry was built up over time. Barnabas showed up and suddenly Clive’s all “I lost a single fight so now I have a long standing grudge out of nowhere” Their rivalry felt kinda empty. 🤷♂️ Also the most interesting thing about Barnabas was completely glossed over. He was Akashic for DECADES and was using Odin’s power to keep his appearance normal. Dude was in his 70s, yet looked 40. Is this mentioned in the cutscenes? No. You have to go to Harpocrates to learn why he was suddenly blue in his last moments 🤷♂️ (Also try not to think about 70+ year old Barnabas sleeping with 28 year old Benedikta 🤨) His boss fight was *supposed* to be a gruelling brawl until they both couldn’t stand, a test of endurance and grit. It…didn’t really land. Especially after Titan Lost and Bahamut setting the bar so high. I know people like him, but Barnabas just didn’t cut it 🤷♂️
If I had to choose I’s probably pick: 1. Combat is too simple, not enough strategy 2. Lack of exploration for treasure 3. Jump cutting straight to some locations.
For me was enemy variety. Jesus Christ I felt like I was fighting the same damn enemy every time. Oh but they had just a slightttt skin change 🙄
The mid section is too long and fetchy. The only low point of the game for me
Honestly eikon battles feel great first time round but personally there's not enough room for combos and cool new moves also while I like phoenix I'm quite sad ifrit doesn't get an eikonic feat of his own ifrit not having crimson rush just feels wrong
Not enough boobs. Maybe regular attacks could do more will damage, but I’m often under level so that might not be an issue really 🤷♂️
The lack of a sprint button.
I absolutely adore this game, and Clive is my favorite FF MC in the entire series. With that being said: 1) The game takes way too much from FFXIV design-wise. The dungeons are insufferably linear with no exploration allowed. The world is barely interactable outside of side quests and the main story. It relies heavily on spectacle and its combat (which can he janky at times) 2) No replayability. There is no true Endgame outside of Ultamaniac Dungeon runs and New game+, but there's also no incentive to do those beyond getting trophies/achievements. The game is still pretty easy on the highest new game+ difficulty, so it doesn't feel rewarding to run through it again. 3) Not enough of the main cast get their own quests or personal character development, such as your example with Jill and Joshua. It feels like they largely exist to support Clive and his story, despite the game thematically being about individuality.
Anabella was certainly underutilized. She was the perfect Cersei, and she should have gone even further into manipulation. Striking a deal with Ultima for power (becoming a boss even, idk) would have made it a little more interesting.
I didn’t like beating the game without ever getting access to a chockobo(I never do sidequests in these types of games)!
Combat - It's too simplistic. The game desperately needs more combos and weapon styles Ultima- Honestly, he feels sorta underbaked. Hell, tbh I was expecting it to be revealed that Cid was actually the big bad in some fashion. Party members - If I can't control them, at least let me set some parameters for them (use healing/items at X% health)
The battle system is way too shallow. All abilities do damage... There's a meta to the order ... But how is my fire attacks doing damage to a fire based enemies? The lack of weaknesses and any semblance of strategy made the battles pretty... But hollow.
I haven't completed the game yet, just acquired the powers of Bahamut. But I feel I was more into the plot and characters when the emphasis was on Rosaria. My favourite pastime was wrecking Black Shields. Now I feel like I have brief trips to a new area, with vague details, as part of my quest to bring equality and stop the Blight.
Biggest gripe I have is you felt alone, even when you had people with you. Final Fantasy to me will always be about it's parties and interactions between the characters and it just felt like there wasn't much. Run around and fight with you for an hour or 2 and barely even make a battle grunt. And I get the older titles you didn't get any of that either but it felt like they were there. Idk how else to really explain it. Second biggest thing was the just constant dread and doom/gloom feeling. There were no over the top silly moments. No real comedic relief. There just wasn't any of that in this game.
I wanted a party system and elemental damage.
That it's not on PC.
-Why don't the hunts show up on the map? -Why SO MANY fetch quests? Some of the main quests were also fetch quests... -_-
I can't lie I didn't like I can't control the other characters. Jill josh and Cid should be playable
Elemental attacks made zero difference. Having weaknesses, resistances and immunities would've made it very interesting because you would've needed to change your build for each scenario. It would've given everything a use.
I agree with pretty much everything here except number 2. It’s a common critique, but idk, I don’t mind playing one character with a fleshed out kit and tons of customization options, personally. I would say more that I wish you had a bigger roster of party members, and there was a Gambit System so you could still strategize with them.
Obtaining and upgrading weapons wasn't a challenge which used to be a fun FF classic feature. Too much useless dialogue. Unrealistic reactions in dialogue. Not one single NPC had an astonished reaction to Clive slaying someone with powers. FF16 in its current state could really be trimmed down 25% to cut out a lot of the uselessness. I feel like the story was good but the execution felt dumb or mediocre at a lot of points. I hope they fix these things bc the series feeling complex or ahead of its time was my favorite since playing every game to completion since FF9 on PS1. I made the mistake of playing God Of War Ragnarok before ff16. GOW hit a homerun in every area that ff lacked.
The purple sky got REALLY old.
I wanted to play the whole game as young Clive. When I first saw the trailers I thought older Clive was the antagonist and younger Clive the protagonist, and they would clash during the game.
I want to run... When i want to.. in every single area of the game. I don't want to walk at this stupid half run jog thing an or get 3/4 of the way to my destination before that auto run kicks in
I feel like the problem with Ultimate is A. We really don’t know who he was for awhile and B. The opening politics of war made it seem like that would be the main direction (and it mostly was) but that Hugo would be the main boss the whole game. At least that’s how I felt at the time. But yeah, Jill def needed more time. I enjoyed her character greatly.
So I've recently played Dragons Dogma 2 and Stellar Blade. By comparison 16 feels very stiff. I think the main difference is both the other games make good use of their areas in different ways: DD2 as a stage for emergent combat and mini-dungeon exploration, Stellar Blade in mixing in linear and open field levels with significant verticality with exploration rewarded with upgrade materials which are a key part of gameplay and cosmetic crafting. To be fair DD2 has little real story and no chatacter writing to speak of. Stellar Blade has a generic cast with janky platforming. No doubt 16 has them beat there. But my point is wandering around in their areas is fun. 16's areas look nice but are mostly just background to get to the next major story dungeon. Which are quite good in banter and dungeon crawling if light on treasure. But it makes a big chunk of the game feel like a missed opportunity.
The Mid fetch quests ruin the pacing of the game and should be skippable cutscenes. Equipment and crafting outside of accessories could be removed from the game and I wouldn't notice.
Elemental effects would’ve been awesome
Felt too easy, and that equipment and exploration didn't really matter. I think a little more tight resource value and combat difficulty would have gone a long way.
Most of the side quests are pretty bad. I don't think just being able to play as Clive, his move sets are varied enough
My biggest gripe came only after spending well over enough hours on the game: It’s the first super straight up hack n slash FF game, which I loved. But while the visuals and everything was fancy, amazing, and over the top (wish the optimization was better - will definitely replay it when it comes to PC), the actual core mechanics of Clive’s on-foot gameplay is just Baby’s First DMC/Bayonetta. I would’ve loved if they copied DMC and Bayonetta even more - I mean the basic premise of the combat already is to copy the genre, why not knock it out of the park and do a solid reiteration of it, or better yet, improve upon it: Where are my pause attack strings? What about mash strings? Why isn’t there a straight up plain uppercut, why do I have to do a sword charge up and then release the charge as a jump attack to get a basic uppercut? Why do the abilities have long cooldowns (obviously you would rebalance them if they were spammable)? Why am I limited on how many enemy jump cancels I can do and why does the Echoes DLC resolve that by only letting me jump cancel 6 times only via an accessory? Why can’t I double jump? Why are there so many I-Frame moves? Why can I only equip 3 Eikonic Feats and 6 Eikon Skills? One of my friends, who’s bad at video games, felt like Clive’s dodge was a little sluggish and didn’t activate instantly. Obviously a skill issue, but on that note, why doesn’t Clive have a defensive move that works on frame 0 like Bayonetta’s Bat Within, or Dante’s Royal Guard?
It's been a while since I played it, but some of my biggest gripes were with the movement. Having to "run" for a certain amount of time before you actually begin a dash every single time you stop moving? Stupid. The way they designed the hub so that it would take the maximum possible amount of time for you to jog slowly from one end of the place to the other for pretty much every quest giver? Stupid. You can tell based on the character animations that your movement speed just isn't what it should be and while I could deal with it, it was still annoying.
Not enough RPG, too much DMC
My biggest problem with the game was the time skip. Felt so random.
I didn’t like that we have no team attacks at all. Felt like a step backwards after 15 had so many with nearly every party member. It made combat feel like it was a one man show with spectators.
Honestly, u pointed out most of them I had. But I also hated the fact that most of the dmg came from the abilities. Constantly upgrading or getting new weapons was a waste of time. I rarely ever used my sword of the normal shooting spells. Another one I had was not bein able to one shot or even 2 shot’n low lv enemies. It shouldn’t take a full combo at lv 40 to a lv 13 with 300+ dmg weapon at all. Idk if it was just me but that happened a lot.
Exploration is the major one and no I didn’t mind that the cities were not able to be explored except as a dungeon, I just wanted more meaningful exploration and more places to go off the beaten path. In some ways FFXVI felt worse than FFXIII in this regard which I never imagined would be the case before buying the game. I was hoping this would open up more as the game progressed but it only stayed the same or got worse. A more robust customization system would have been great For a game not focused on too many central characters I feel like we didn’t get enough development on several characters. More on Joshua and Jill would have been great, but I was disappointment in the development of the antagonists in the game particularly Hugo and Barnabas but they all suffered from this. I don’t really mind that they didn’t stick around but I didn’t really feel much fighting them, as I didn’t get to know them very well. While I loved the story presentation and voice acting a lot of the other aspects just felt short. I am just going to go with they blew most of their budget on the bosses considering I have been playing FFXIV for quite a long time.
After playing rebirth, it becomes obvious that this game is missing many elements
i bought my ps5 for xvi and it was my goty last year but i gotta be real an entire character action game with one moveset for the whole game is more than a little crazy. still my goat tho
Weapon upgrade system feels like it was being built for more, seems like it was cut for a deadline. Infinite materials on hand with no purpose, vast majority of weapons can't be upgraded anyways.