Recent reviews by Rene

It seems that FFXVI has lost the essence of what it means to be a Final Fantasy game in an attempt to attract a broader audience outside of it's existing fanbase. It seems that the company has discarded some elements like combat, party and skills system of it's predecessor game which has seen great feedback from it's existing fanbase.

I wrote this review from a perspective of a person who has played every single major FF (with the exception of 11) that was released. I played this game without reading any reviews and had no expectations going in.


The story starts out amazing. I was sold by the ending of the demo. The ending of the demo sent chills down my spine, yearning for more of what's to come. However, this feeling did not last for too long as the story progression becomes extremely focused on Clive's perspective. The world building was great but the story tends to gravitate around Clive which made the rest of the world seem a like an empty shell. Optional side quests are used to pad the character development of side characters but the nature of side quests makes the act of doing them very dull and hence disincentives people from wanting to know more about each character.


The overall gameplay is really fluid. The systems in the game made it easy for any player to understand how to do anything within the game. I particularly enjoyed how the game included lore, inner voices and the current situation of the Valisthea (the world within the game). Quick travel takes away most of the boring parts of travelling by foot/vehicle in traditional FF games. The quest system in the game allows players to easily keep track and progress main/side quests. However, because of how easy it was to navigate between quests, the act of doing quests almost seems very single dimensional. The tradeoff to make the game easier for players with a comprehensive navigational system has resulted in a game that has almost no exploratory incentives.

Segueing into the looting system of the game. There seems to be no incentive to explore the world for loots or treasure because of how the loots from monsters and chests are usually just crafting scraps. I personally never felt excited to get loots from a box I found in the wild.


Cutscenes are beautiful and the epic boss fights are definitely eye catching. However there are segments of the game which mixes cutscenes and gameplay intermittently. This made it such that climaxes of the game's story lasted between 1 to 2 hours. Although some key moments were really exciting, I found this aspect of the game making it really difficult to pace myself each day as a working adult. I have no idea which moment in the game is about to lock me into a 1 to 2 hour cutscene. Combine this with a game crash and it will be an absolute disaster for my game's progress as I'll have to replay certain parts of the game. There were key moments in the game which I really felt like should've been segmented into shorter parts so that the player is able to disengage for a moment.


The combat lacks depth. After learning the basic mechanics of the game, you will realize that the game combat does not go beyond the basics. The rewarding factor of mastering the basics diminishes beyond the first two to three hours of playthrough. You will not be severely punished if you're still missing a few dodges in the end game, taking damage feels almost the same as the first few hours of my gameplay. The game offers a "action focused" mode and a "story focused" mode. I've tried playing on both modes and found that the action focused mode made it such that the boss fights take a longer time to finish, which indirectly means that there were more moves you had to learn about the boss fights. This makes me think that the game directors are specifically making this game more like a cutscene simulator as opposed to an action game.


The skill system is really simplified as compared to its predecessor games. This reduces the depth of the game combat by quite a bit at the cost of making it simpler. The skills can be largely split into three different categories. The first being more like "crowd control" skills, the second being "single target" skills while the last category are more "autonomous" skills.

Skills are also part of your character's resource system. Each skill has a cooldown and can be used intentionally to bring down the boss's stagger bar versus dealing high damage while the boss is staggered seems to be the decision that the developers are encouraging users to make. Using the skills in a timely manner such that they trigger more damage is pretty rewarding but can quickly get old once you get the hang of it.


Equipment progression in the game is straightforward. You beat main and optional bosses to obtain crafting materials to forge weapons/accessories. There is barely any customization to your character's build. Such an approach also meant that the equipment system had very little depth. Majority of the accessories you obtain in the game tweaks the parameters of your specific skills. I found myself mostly deciding to unload all of my skills on the enemy when they are staggered, which really made it such that I never fancied most of the accessories.


I personally felt that there were a lot of missed opportunities for character development in the main storyline. The largest movers of the story in my opinion are Clive, Cid and Joshua. Beyond them, no one else really twisted the story much. Clive, like most Final Fantasy protagonists, lands on the lawful good side of the moral alignment chart. This characteristic combined with the fact that most of the story only focused on Clive, made the story painful to go through as each moment was really predictable. This pales in comparison to previous FF games where party members quirks usually made up for the personality gap of the main protagonist.


You can't go wrong with Soken's music.


I don't personally have a very strong GPU on my PC. I was running the game on a RX 5700XT. I've had some issues at the start of the game but most of the stutters that most people mentioned about are pretty much something I never found annoying. There were known issues where the game is known to crash at certain points of the story and that was pretty annoying. However, I never personally experienced that more than once so I don't think there was any issues with the performance on my end.


If you want to watch a 30 hour long aesthetic movie go ahead and get this game while it's on sale. But if you're looking for that classic Final Fantasy experience this is definitely a different take on it.

good

there is barely any "game" in this

Keanu chungus wholesome 100 breathtaking 100 moment

lol ♥♥♥ dota