168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16 is a slow burn. It should have been 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:several hours shorter, with many of its RPG mechanics and side quests feeling too dry to engage with despite their stellar writing. The𒅌 Hideaway also lacks a fast travel tool, so you’ll often find yourself walking across its wooden staircases and convoluted layout for conversations that could have been done through a single line of dialogue or not at all. The stories being told and the characters you meet are wonderful, although it is housed within a formula that feels woefully outdated. Ironic, given how everything else is determined to move the series forward. Nowhere is this more true than the first few hours.
Aside from the fantastic opening sequence and boss battle housed within the free demo, the full game has a far more glacial pace. Clive and Cid trudge through bland forests and identical medieval castles doing battle with the same selection of imperial soldiers and wild animals again and again. You’ll obediently follow quests hoping in vain that the game’s momentum will eventually kickstart, but for so long it just doesn’t seem interested in pulling you in. It feels like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Square Enix is patiently putting all the chess pieces into play before pulling the wool over our eyes, providing the player with enough knowledge to fall in love with this world before turning the entire charade upside down. It works, but I’ll admit the initial pacing had me rolling my eyes and reminding me of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 13’s worstꦆ qualities more than anything else. If you feel the same right now, please soldier on through it.
Final Fantasy 16 isn’t open world, and the opening act makes this abundantly clear. Clive is still learning the ropes, and so a🤡re you, with the game afraid to let us loose on quests or monster hunts in the fear we might get lost. Instead, we fight baddies, watch cutscenes, or walk down a horribly linear corridor of scenery before repeating the process all 🅺over again.
It occasionally gives us leniency with a side mission or two, but until a big narrative twist that I won’t dare spoil h♛ere, it seems like Final Fantasy 16 has fastened on the stabilisers for no good reason. Clive doesn’t have many Eikon abilities yet, so c♎ombat boils down to using the same effective trio of abilities and nothing else, while our hero is even still wearing a gross set of armour thrown upon him by his superiors instead of the sick anime garb featured on all the promotional materials. You don’t get this for hours, with the rust upon it a bleak sign of where exactly this game goes wrong in its most important sprint. It picks up though, and after it does, you’ll be free to embark on myriad side quests, monster hunts, and adventures to discover new and old parts of this world without an obnoxious hand-holding tutorial looming over every second.
After a lot happens and you’re transitioned to a new Hideaway housed within a fallen airship, Final Fantasy 16 suddenly feels like the grand adventure it was always meant to be. Clive now has access to a base of operations filled with comrades, along with new faces dotted across workshops, classrooms, and medical facilities all trying to eke out a living. There’s a warmth to it all, and you&rs💟quo;re constantly encouraged to sp♈eak with everyone in order to gain an understanding of where people are at, only to revisit once the story progresses to invest more and more in each evolving story.
There’s also the addition of Vivian and Harpocrates, two glorified exposition machines found in the Hideaway. Past events are given further context while the battles that awaited us are no longer nebulous in their existence, but b🦋roken down by the most minute of details. Extensive biographies and beautifully🦩 presented maps feel like an apology for an opening act that dragged its feet for far too long.
Locat﷽ions previously only waltzed 𓂃through in pursuit of the next cutscene are also populated with more quests and characters now as you’re encouraged to revisit them and venture off the beaten path, all while
stumbling upon new pastu🍌res that help paint Valisthea as a realm defined by cultures yet unexplored. While a lot of the side activities remain ponderous and lack what I would consider true freedom, it’s a far cry from the railroaded first act that never gives Clive the means to act on his own accord. When it does, the game transfo🌱rms.
Given the popularity of similarly linear narrative blockbusters like God of War Ragnarok and The Last of Us Part 2, perhaps Final Fantasy 16’s slow burn isn’t a big deal after all, and the audience it is gunning for will appreciate the slow rollout of character development and world building that otherwise feels like the antithesis of this franchises’ usual cadence. It was much too slow for me, and only served to highlight the occasional glints of tedium that hinder🗹 what is otherwise an outstanding game. If you’re in the same boat, I promise it will only get better.
