Critics praise Final Fantasy 16's fluid combat, kaiju battles and mature story

Critics praise Final Fantasy 16’s fluid combat, kaiju battles and mature story

Time Stamp: March 2, 2023 4:22 AM

Square Enix wants to reclaim Final Fantasy’s ‘must-buy’ status with the upcoming sequel, and it shows. 

Image: Square Enix

Early impressions for Final Fantasy 16 have flooded the Internet this week, after members of the media were invited by Square Enix to preview the game before launch. General sentiment on the game appears to be unanimously positive, with journalists highlighting the sequel’s fantastic score, action-heavy combat, surprisingly mature plot and huge kaiju battles. 

Here’s everything we learned:

An all-star development team

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Square Enix put the best of the best in charge of Final Fantasy 16, and it shows so far. Producer Naoki Yoshida is leading development on the game, after becoming beloved among fans for his work on the Final Fantasy 14 MMO. Yoshida has brought several members of the MMO’s development team with him here, including Michael-Christopher Koi Fox who oversees localisation, in-game lore and writing, and Masayoshi Soken, who composes the sequel’s already fantastic-sounding soundtrack. Hiroshi Minagawa also provides art direction for the game’s medieval-themed setting.

Rounding out this team is a new Square Enix member: Ryota Suzuki, the combat designer behind Devil May Cry 5’s action-heavy battle system – which explains why Final Fantasy 16’s new combat feels so familiar. Hiroshi Takai of the SaGa franchise and The Last Remnant is also onboard as a game director. This is a team of veteran game creators, and they seem to be especially confident of what they have made here. 

Goodbye, turn-based combat

Final Fantasy 16 completely breaks away from the franchise’s traditional turn-based combat, after recent entries like Final Fantasy 15 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake tried to mix turn-based and real-time combat mechanics together for something that feels modern and familiar at the same time. 16 ditches the old for the new altogether to appeal to modern tastes. according to a dev interview with Gematsu: 

Over recent years, real-time action games have continued their march to becoming the norm amongst gamers. To keep in step and further evolve the Final Fantasy series, XVI has stepped away from the traditional command-based battle system, more common in the older games in the series, and adopted true real-time action controls.

Early impressions liken the game’s combat to Devil May Cry 5 and God of War, both of which give the player multiple abilities to juggle in real time during a battle and companions to assist them. Protagonist Clive Rosfield will pick up abilities from various Eikons (this game’s version of summons) he meets throughout the campaign, allowing him to wield elemental magic in combat. Equipping Titan for example, allows him to block and deliver heavy attacks, while Phoenix allows him to dash closer to enemies and speed up movement. 

Much like God of War’s Runic abilities, the game wants you to swap between these abilities constantly in battle, and certain enemies and bosses will require you to do so to exploit weaknesses. The game also handles difficulty levels in a novel way – instead of buffing the player and nerfing enemies, the ‘story-focused’ lower difficulty will simply give players two special accessories to equip which offer helpful benefits, like slowing down time and automatically activating potions. The core experience will remain the same in both ‘action-focused’ and ‘story-focused’ difficulties otherwise. 

There is however, a third difficulty mode called ‘Final Fantasy’, which acts as a New Game+ mode that not only increases enemy attack damage but changes up their placement throughout the game, and redesigns entire battles to throw off the player. This one is designed for players who really want more out of the game’s combat on a second playthrough. 

It’s not an open-world game

Contrary to popular belief, Final Fantasy 16 is not an open-world game. Although it features a fantastical world to explore in Valisthea, the development team has opted to flesh it out via a series of zones that feature its major nations, with a central hub being the connective tissue between these zones that players will constantly return to. Each nation is guarded by Eikons, huge kaiju-like beings that possess an elemental power. Players might recognise these as summons from older Final Fantasy games. Eikons live within Dominants, humans who have the ability to summon their Eikon and harness their strength Ultraman-style. 

So yes, of course you’re going to fight every Eikon in the game. Among the confirmed boss battles are Titan, Ifrit, Phoenix, Shiva, Garuda and Bahamut, with even more in-game Eikons probably being kept secret for now. Each fight will take place in a unique setting with MMO-like boss mechanics, with the early impressions showcasing a large-scale battle with Garuda. Garuda’s fight is meant to feel like a wrestling match, but the developers have hinted that the rest of the Eikon fights will play out across different genres like ‘3D shooting’ and ‘high-speed action’. None of the fights will feel similar considering that they’re all built from the ground up to be entirely unique from the others. 

Clive will also add companions to his party as the campaign progresses, with the story taking place across different phases of his life. The two companions shown to the media were Cid (a Final Fantasy mainstay and dominant of Ramuh) and Torgal, the latter of whom is a dog who constantly follows Clive around regardless of who else joins the party. All companions are controlled by AI, but the player can issue simple commands in battle and tinker with their abilities as they level up. 

The segment of the game demoed for the media was taken from the main questline, which saw Clive, Cid and Torgal tracking down the dominant of fire. This journey took the trio through a castle belonging to the Royal Waloeder Army, where they instead bumped into the dominant of Garuda: Benedikta. Benedikta launches her two harpies Suparna and Chirada on Clive for a boss battle, before fighting him herself for another boss battle. The number one thing we learned this week? Final Fantasy 16 has a lot of bosses. 

Final Fantasy 16’s story takes on a more mature tone than many members of the media were expecting. According to Gamespot, Benedikta throws out F-bombs while injuring Clive’s dog Torgal, and other outlets reported more violence and darker themes than we’ve seen in recent Final Fantasy games. These outlets have also praised Soken’s soundtrack for the game, so look forward to some really epic orchestral tracks to come out of 16. The main story has been confirmed to be about 35 hours long, with 11 hours of cinematics. 

It looks real good, basically

Overall, it looks like Final Fantasy 16 is trying to carve out a new identity for the mainline franchise. In a bid to win back fans who might have been alienated by all the alternate timeline nonsense of 7 Remake and the messy story of 15, this game tells a full story with a darker tone, modernised combat and big kaiju. Because who doesn’t love kaiju?

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