How do you update a series that’s main incarnation is now on the number sixteen? Well, in the case of Square Enix, you watch all of Game of Thrones and say “Let’s do that but with more magic!” and thus, Final Fantasy XVI was born.
That’s the story however, what about the gameplay? Well you do the same as what your last couple of games have been doing and remove the menu driven, turn based combat and turn it into a character action game. Just like the Final Fantasy before it, i.e. Final Fantasy VII Remake, this works excellently and combat is just as fun and smooth as that game.
The Game of Thrones inspiration can be seen from the off, as the sci-fi elements common to a lot of Final Fantasy titles are gone, replaced with more classic fantasy elements of swords, shields and…well I was going to say horses, but this being Final Fantasy they ride the good old Chocobo. You play as Clive Rosfield, son of Archduke of Rosaria Elwin Rosfield and heir to the throne, or he would be, if it wasn’t for his little brother, Joshua.
Joshua is the dominant of flame, for the powerful Eikon Phoenix. Basically Joshua can channel fire magic and become a giant flaming bird. As per the law of the land, the Phoenix dominant will become the next Archduke of Rosaria. Clive, being the good brother and good guy that he is, becomes Joshua’s first shield or bodyguard and is charged with keeping the dominant of fire safe.
This being Game of Thrones inspired, let’s just say that doesn’t prove the easiest of jobs. Without getting too spoilery, lots of political intrigue and the like ensues, especially after a time jump of roughly fifteen years. This jump highlights one of the story's more intriguing elements, namely that magic users are not exactly worshiped in this world - far from it. At best they are slaves, treated as property to be used by those who have enough money to own them.
It’s an interesting take on the generic ‘magic is just a thing people can do idea’, and bearers (as they are known) are people who can wield magic without the use of crystals mined from the bottom of colossal mother crystals. These are sold so people can power stoves, put water in wells and all sorts of other tasks. Bearers are also bought and sold, used as slaves for those same tasks as it is more cost effective up to the point the curse of their magic turns them to stone.
The lore of the magic here is excellent, a really cool take on some of the more obvious tropes of fantasy fiction. Some of the best side quests look at this in nuanced detail, becoming some of the best content in the game. Depending on how you feel about this it is either a shame that the main story doesn’t focus enough on this aspect of the lore, or what it does focus on gets a bit overused and can hit you over the head again and again.
While I personally, as you can probably tell, like the lore quite a bit even I got a little bored of them constantly going back to the slavery aspect of the world. This was mainly down to it never being the main focus of the story, despite the potential it had. However, I do admit that sixty plus hours of it was probably going to be a bit much.
So many games put the best stuff in side quests of late, so it's a trope I am getting used to. To be fair, the main storyline isn’t terrible, by any stretch, and again the Game of Thrones inspiration shines through very quickly. Do not be fooled however, the writing here isn’t half as good but it does push the narrative forward with some cool twists and some obvious ones.
Final Fantasy XVI is far more violent than previous games, again in part from its inspiration, with blood flying as Clive cleaves through enemies at a pace only rivalled by Dante from Devil May Cry. There is a lot more swearing and some rather spicy scenes, nothing gratuitous, but certainly more adult than any previous game in the series. It makes a distinct departure for the series and one I am all for, though it might not be to everyone’s tastes, and to be fair, not all enemies are human, there are certainly plenty of monsters to fight around a semi-open world.
As for the actual gameplay, as previously stated the game is closer to Devil May Cry than traditional Final Fantasy games, and that is no bad thing. Slicing through enemies with the traditional comically oversized sword is awesome and as Clive’s abilities grow so do your combat options. In real terms this means that you can change up special moves, as Clive has the power to utilize the abilities of certain magic types to give him more powerful attacks.
These attacks might be something like Will-o-The Wykes, which creates fireballs that float around Clive dealing damage to any enemies he is close to, or the ultra powerful Flames of Rebirth, that hits all enemies around Clive multiple times. As your options grow, you can eventually mix and match these abilities to customize Clive to your play style. This does however take ability points to unlock, which is a strange thing to have on the skill tree and seems a bit of an artificial way to expand the list. It’s not a deal breaker, just weird.
The combo possibilities are really cool, as each special move has a separate cool down and if timed correctly you can go on a spree of spectacular attacks that can obliterate an entire gang of enemies in one hit. Especially when combined with Clive’s ability to semi-prime. This is where he can partially summon his Eikon, increasing his strength, healing and power regeneration. Powering up, then unleashing special attack after special attack feels and looks awesome, not least in part because watching a boss’ health bar drain down to less than half in a matter of seconds is brilliant.
There are then the most spectacular battles in the game, namely the Eikon battles. Eikon’s are the game's version of traditional Final Fantasy summons, but can only be called upon by the dominant for each. As Clive’s brother Joshua is the dominant of the Phoenix, he can call upon and become that summon. Once Clive gets his dominant abilities, he too can call upon his Eikon. Unfortunately this is not an at will ability, it's not even an ability of last resort only to be used once per battle.
Eikon battles are scripted sections of the game, spectacular encounters in the kaiju vs kaiju vein where a fair amount of control is removed from the player. To be fair this isn’t so much of a problem as you do still have some and previous games have not allowed you really control summons at all so it's not a major thing. The biggest thing about these sections in terms of control is that it can be a bit fiddly to see target reticules in some of them to be able to launch abilities, which is then compounded by the pace of the action which I found makes it very hard to see what is going on and concentrate on what you need to do. At least in my case, my brain simply got overwhelmed.
It doesn’t change the fact that the visuals in these sections, and indeed the entire game, are awesome. Running around stunning scenery, firing off all those amazing abilities and the art direction in general makes for a feast for the eyes, making it a pleasure to explore the semi open world of Valisthea and its warring countries.
The sound is great too, the main characters have tremendous voice actors that really imbue the weight of the story beats to them. The main downside is that you will hear the same NPC voice lines over and over again. To be fair, this isn’t a problem to just this game, any game with a lot of NPC’s floating around suffers the same issue but there is a lot of backtracking in Final Fantasy XVI which escalates this particular problem as the same lines will fire every single time you go to a specific location.
Like all of the issues in the game, it's not a deal breaker, it just brings an otherwise excellent package down just a little bit. That’s the thing about Final Fantasy XVI, it's just a bit below excellence and it's a real shame because everything about it clearly shows a labor of love from its developers and a focus on telling a very different type of story than previous games in the series gives it a refreshing take on the Final Fantasy formula.
The biggest problem with the story is that it isn't a complete departure from series tropes, and eventually becomes very anime and therefore extremely Final Fantasy. I know it's where others have dropped off from the game and I can completely understand that, it is very much a case of your mileage may vary.
I really like Final Fantasy XVI, it has some spectacular moments, excellent combat and a compelling story up until it returns to familiar tropes of the overall series. I would have liked to see a bigger focus on the Game of Thrones inspired political intrigue and warring nations of this most intriguing of worlds and some better writing around the concept of the bearers slavery, but what's there is good enough, just not quite as excellent as it should be.
Final Fantasy XVI can be described as a Final Fantasy game for people who don’t like Final Fantasy games and it’s a statement I can fully agree with. If you don’t normally like this style of RPG then give this one a go, because it is like little else in the genre. You will be rewarded with some excellent combat, an intriguing story and awesome visuals and that just might turn you on to a whole new genre.