168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16 has an astounding sense of place. Throughout my journey I’d retire to the Hideaway to walk through its hollowed airship halls to catch glimpses of abstract conversations or catch up with people I’d come to call friends. Some might have new missions to offer, while others reflect on the daunting ꦏbattles ahead. Each of them depends on me, representing a small part of what Clive Rosfield is fighting for.
I could tease a potent🀅ial future with a childhood friend, mend tumultuous bonds between my resident blacksmith and an old acquaintance, or delve into the dark past of a merchant who once benefited from the morally duplicitous nature of war. Everyone in Final Fantasy 16 has layers, ignorant to decades of tropes this series comes loaded with. Now, thanks to the guiding hands of Naoki Yoshida, I’d struggle to see us ever going back after such a dramatic step forward. This is still the Final Fantasy we know and love, but in its triumph manages to be more nuanced, challenging, an🌱d emotionally resonant than I ever thought possible.
This pilgrimage towards greatness is marred by a few stumbling blocks, many of which see Final Fantasy 16 awkwardly get in its own way as it desperately tries to set up parts of the narrative or flesh out its combat system to a degree where it extends beyond mashing the same button while constantly recycling a reliable trio of different abilities. Such faults are made doubly awkward when the opening is otherwise fantastic. Square Enix was heavily inspired by 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Game of Thrones this time around, and you can tell. There are cutscenes for exposition that feature two naked ch♔aracters🐎 whispering sweet nothings to one another, or a gaggle of politicians who talk war strategy while sipping on the vineyard’s latest pressing. You can see HBO’s influence dripping from the walls, but the result is infinitely more hopeful.
Clive Rosfield - his silly name grows on you, I promise - is the Crown Prince of Rosaria, a small yet beloved Duchy in the continent of Valisthea that has become consumed by equal parts war and an aether-draining corruption known as the Blight. He’s also sworn protector to his younger brother Joshua, who one day is destined to awaken the power of the Phoenix as a Dominant, a rare figure with the power to take the form of a chosen Eikon. Those born with such a blessing often consider it a curse, knowing they are destined to become instrument🌠s of war for power hungry kings and forced to kill millions.
In typical RPG fashion, everything goes wrong and there’s a timeskip into the far future when we reunite with Clive as a grown adult worn down by the burdens of vengeance. This flawed hero has spent the past decad🍷e and change hunting down the mysterious man who killed his younger brother, even if it meant becoming a Bearer and swearing his eternal allegiance to a Kingdom that𝔍 spurred on his eventual doom. Bearers are slaves in all but name, mocked for their existence in a society that has become privileged by the magic powers they provide.
It’s one of many compelling narrative hooks that Final Fantasy 16 digs into you as it explores the very real c🐬onsequences of a magical society, and how otherworldly beings are used to stoke the flames of war instead of bringing peace to all those who call Valisthea home. W🃏hen Clive teams up with Cidolfus Telamon and is asked to destroy all the Mothercrystals that provide this land with aether, he views it as an opportunity to change the world and his own destiny.
All of this eventually culminates in fighting god, because of course it does, but it's the quieter character moments and understated pieces of world building that truly excel. Hamlets across Valisthea are wrought with bustling conversations and townsfolk going about their daily lives, chats you aren’t a part of touching on nearby quests or developments in the wider world that are having an impact on their place within it. Things evolve with the main narrative too, providing an incentive to revisit old haunts once Valisthea finally opens itself up after an arduous first act filled with repetitious forests and bland combat. It takes so long to get going.
Final Fantasy 16’s battle system feels like a novel mixture of Tales of Arise and Bayonetta. It outfits Clive with the powers of multiple Eikons (read: kaiju-esque gods) ranging from Garuda to Bahamut. You’ll unlock them while progressing through the story, providing Clive access to more skills and combo chains that bring otherwise pedestrian combat encounters to life. It feels incredible to chain half a dozen abili👍ties together while an enemy is staggered, reducing their health bars down to nothing in a bout of relentless aggression that always feels satisfying.
To reach this point takes several hours though, as you plod through the opening act, whose conclusion opens up the world, characters, and combat to a degree that, at first, seems overwhelming. It is a barbarous introduction worth persevering through, and i♏s still peppered with excellence. When Valisthea opened its doors fully, I couldn’t stop playing. The main story presented a breadcrumb trail of political intrigue and familial compassion so compelling that I needed to find out what happened next.
Clive’s adventure takes him to myriad regions awash with new characters to meet and quests to embark upon, most of which reinforce a thematic message of building a world where people can live and die on their own terms, no longer bound by the unfair christening of magic or outdated kingdoms that put the Duchy🐓 above all else. It questions the roles of magic, crystals, royalty, and slavery in a society that has now grown complacent to its own prejudice, afraid of change in the fear it will uproot al🍷l it holds dear.
Clive will jump between different Kingdoms, taking on fellow Dominants such as Barnabas Tharmr or ౠBenedikta Harman. Every villain is justified in their motivations,𒆙 either fighting for their own people or twisted causes they deem worthwhile. There’s a far darker force operating in the shadows, however, and stumbling across revelations brought forth new context and a reconsidered outlook on the places and people of this game it once convinced me I knew so well.
Final Fantasy 16 brings all its disparate pieces together for a final act that eclipses anything the series has done ꦐpreviously. It made me care for its characters in ways I never have before, bringing me to cheers of joy, cries of sadness, and screams of frustration as each new twist reared its head. The writing is stellar, made even better by excellent vocal performances that make it feel more like a prestige drama than a blockbuster video game.
Yet its signature charm still remains, with Valisthea blending familiar tenets like Chocobos and aether into a land filled with regional British accents and neighbouring cultures that come together to form a world that feels ambitiously complete. Unfortunately, many of the larger cities featured in cutscenes a💜nd larger battles aren’t fully explorable. Instead, you’ll walk through them as part of mostly linear missions that involve little more than dozens of battles🉐 and the occasional cutscene.
I wanted to spend hours in these places, but weirdly I was never allowed. Part of me was bitterly aware that most of the daunting structures on the horizon would be restricted in their majesty, which at times can make Final Fantasy 16 distractingly empty. I’d rather focu🗹sed environments than a bloated open world, although a lack of signature locations is still hard to swallow. It’s contradictory to the excessive scale found everywhere else. This is a mass🐽ive game with massive stakes and massive Eikons duking it out across entire continents and beyond, but so often its held back by a deflating sense of smallness.
Eikon battles are spectacular, echoing Pacific Rim or Neon Genesis Evangelion with their absurd sense of scale. Giant health bars fill the screen as you’re blessed with a new set of skills unique to Ifrit, Phoenix, or whomeverꦚ you’re controlling. Some of these skirmishes rely on quick-time events too much for their own good, but they’re always in service of raw sꦿpectacle after harder battles have already been fought. It’s not that much of this game is challenging though, since I played through on the action-focused (rather than the easier story-focused) difficulty and only died a handful of times throughout the entire campaign.
It’s built for narrative first and foremost, with the real difficulty hidden in optional battles far off the beaten path in hunts and side quests. Very few of the optional missions feel like filler, with most of them centering on characters I already knew and love or fresh faces set to inevitably win me over. There is some busywork involved at times, mostly in having to fight battles before talking to specific charact🌟ers or making the same tired walks across the Hideaway, which doesn’t have a fast travel option. It’s weird, bloated RPG design in an otherwise standout package, and part of me wonders if the overall experience could be trimmed down a bit.
Final Fantasy 16 is a bold new benchmark for the series that puts emotional complexity and courageous world building at the forefront. Clive Rosfield’s epic journey is defined ꦓby constant bouts of hurt and tragedy, but it’s also lined with an inescapable aura of hope in how our heroes are fighting for a world worth saving. Every person you meet and village saved from ruin are worth protecting, with heartfelt dialogue and ferocious combat mixing together in service of an RPG that, while flawed and glacial in some spots, I’d struggle to label as anything other than a triumph.
An action RPG from Square Enix Creative Business Unit III, Final Fantasy 16 takes place i💦n the world of Valisthea. As Clive Rosfield, First Shield of Rosaria, you embark on a quest to find your missing younger brother.
Review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.
