For the past few months, I’ve been playing through Final Fantasy XVI and have been streaming my play sessions. Having beaten the game, it’s time to put down my thoughts for people who don’t want to wait over 200+ parts of a Let’s Play.
The modern Final Fantasy games have been doing a complicated dance between reflex based combat and more tactical menu based combat. Final Fantasy XV and the VII Remake games have struck a more balanced approach to the question. Final Fantasy XVI, on the other hand, goes “Fuck it, we’re going all in on the reflex based combat.” You have precise dodge windows, a parry mechanic where time slows down if you perfectly time a dodge, and a bunch of special abilities tied to movement – either getting out of the way of attacks, or getting into attack range. This is accompanied by effectively taking party management out of the game. You get party members, but they act independently – they contribute to fights, but they also aren’t in any peril.
This is made up for by the story. The plot puts your protagonist, Clive, at a soldier in the middle of a political power struggle between various kingdoms over the control of magical Mothercrystals, which these nations need to channel magical energy for all parts of life, paired with Bearers – a slave class or people who can channel magic directly, but only to a limited degree. Ultimately, Clive gets caught up in a slave revolt led by this game’s Cid, not only seeking freedom for Bearers, but also an end to the use of Crystals, which are responsible for the Blight that is literally sucking the life out of the land.
The game balances the anti-slavery aspects of the plot and the environmentalist aspects of the plot very well. We see the overall inhumanity that Bearers are faced with, and by putting the general power level of the Bearers at a low level, it avoids the Mutant problem of having to balance people like Glob Herman and Magneto. Further, while some of the things Bearers face are exceptionally cruel, they’re cruel in ways that fit with how Slaves and populations that were put as an underclass were treated in real life.
Arguably, the environmentalist themes of the story work even better than how they’re executed in Final Fantasy VII. Here, the Blight feels like a transparent analog to desertification. We don’t get changes to weather patterns brought on by the Blight, but we do get displacement of wildlife and indigenous people (here represented by sentient monsters like Goblins) due to the encroachment of the Blight.
Where I think the game suffers is that while a core mechanic is based around getting the powers of various Summons and developing them, a lot of the elemental aspects of those powers just don’t come up. It doesn’t matter if I blast a Bomb (normally strong against Fire) with the power of Ramuh (Lightning), Shiva (Ice), or Ifrit (Fire), there is no mechanical difference. Considering the novel concept of having a loadout of Summons to equip, it’s a disappointment that so little is done with it.
Otherwise, the game is fine, and I’m glad I played it. It still feels weak though.
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