Just played the demo and holy fuck. It's amazing. Great combat and story telling.

Definitely a game I will be getting when I get a PS5 again.

I found it boring. What am I missing? I love RPGs and old GoW. This seems like a weird mix of both. I couldn’t get into it.

How far did you get?

How is the battle system?

I like it. Pretty simple so far but obviously it's just a 2-3 hour demo of the beginning of the game. It's smooth.

I pre-ordered the PS5 console bundle with the game.

Hope its worth it....lol only have a couple games I'd even play on it, sure don't like the idea of wasting money on a console to play a game that sucks.

And Yeah, I get it, you guys might like it, but not everyone will.  I've heard some really good things about it though through the review crowds.  Looking forward to it.

I bought a ps5 just for it. And got a bonus when I remembered they're doing the FF7 Remake. So I played the ps5 version of that and loved it. I'm really liking this so far. IMO Square Enix has saved the Final Fantasy franchise.

I have it preordered. The demo was amazing. Especially looking forward to the story for this one.

FF7 Rebirth is early next year, so I'm excited for that as well.  FF7 is my favorite game of all time, and Remake was phenomenal. I have a number of PS5 games now, but originally bought it to play the new FF games (starting with FF7 Remake Intergrade).


The combat is closer to Devil May Cry 5. Combat is fairly limited in the first part of the demo, but if you play the 2nd part that unlocks after beating the 1st, you'll get a better idea of what to expect. Make sure you invest points to learn abilities - that opens things up quite a bit, too.

Given the quality of the demo, unless you really don't like the battle system, you won't be disappointed.

If you're looking for other PS5 games to waste money on, consider buying a PSVR2. It's worth it to me just for Resident Evil 8 and Gran Turismo 7 (bonus points if you get a wheel/pedal setup), but there are other good games with more on the way.

Yeah, the FF franchise appears to be on a great path. I'd love to see a FF Tactics remake, or a full-blown FF Tactics 2 (not the Tactics Advance games, though).

To those who say SE has saved the franchise...

I'd wager to say Yoshi-P has singlehandedly saved the franchise, but that's just me

I got to interview him once, great guy.

That said....3 (or 4 if you count day of) days left!  Can't wait!

I was a huge SquareSoft fan from back in the late 80s to mostly the 90s, to the early 00s, and played pretty much all the golden age JRPGs including FF and many other Square games that were pretty cool.  I remember how big of a deal it was when they jumped ship from only having games with Nintendo to the PlayStation.  

By the time they merged and became SquareEnix I just wasn't into the games as much anymore.  Part of this was I had about an almost 10 year run (2000-2009) of playing EverQuest on PC almost exclusively so I missed a lot of console stuff.  Also, whichever new directors and artists started coming on for FF made and aesthetic and setting that I just couldn't get into.  I played some SquareEnix stuff since but pretty much lost all interest in FF since FFX until the FFVII Remake came out which was excellent.

I tried FFXV and the guys driving around in faux-German sports cars and modern Earth product placement (Coleman camping, American Express, etc.) was wack and totally destroyed any suspension of disbelief.  Maybe this is why the PS Store sells the game and DLC for pennies several times a year.

I knew FFXVI was coming but knew next to nothing about it because I've been out of the FF game for so long but my daughter was asking about it so I got the demo today.  It's very well done and seems like it's going to be a huge hit (so far).  I prefer a more turn based strategy for RPGs but those days are gone.  FFVII Remake was super fun once I got used to the combat and FFXVI will too, I'm certain.  I'm probably going to go ahead and grab it Thursday when it comes out.

I usually only play 1 big game at a time and I REALLY want to finish Sekiro and get the platinum (only need to beat Sword Saint Isshin and use save files for plat), but I'll probably drop that for FFXVI.  Summer is my super low gaming time though and I only get a couple hours per week until winter hits and I'm inside again.

I will give a lot of credit to SquareEnix for re-releasing a lot of old Square stuff and doing some remakes along with new stuff in the old vein.  Octopath Traveler and Triangle Strategy are great; the FF Pixel games are so cool.  They have inspired a new trend of HD-2D games.  

I have the Live A Live Demo (previously not released out of Japan) and it's pretty nice.  I REALLY hope they release a HD-2D FF Tactics game.  It's such a classic masterpiece and all it needs is a 2D upgrade to the new HD style and no fancy shit.

I've been an FF fan since the 90s and I loved the demo.

I hate FF15 and FF13.

FFX-2, FF11, and FF12 were meh to me.

FF7 is my favorite.

All of the others I thought were good to great. I've played the demo several times and it convinced me to pre-order FF16. I was unsure about the more action-oriented nature of the combat, but FF7R and the FF16 demo have me convinced that it's going in a good direction for combat. The Kaiju battle stuff I can live without, as I'm not a fan of QTE battles and button mashing.

Overall, I'm very excited to play once my physical copy arrives today.

This is how I am. I loved the early FF games. I just can't get into the action games that are now being produced. I wanted to like the FF7R, but after seeing a SE released gameplay video of the game, I was turned off from the series.

If you like the story you'll like 7R.

16 is fucking awesome by the way.

I don't like the gameplay. That kills it for me.

+1

It's really, really great.

This is the most poorly optimized game this year and that’s saying something…terrible frame rates

I'm 48% and 13 hours into it, myself. It's been fun. I'm not too big on the amount of QTE in it, though.

IDGAF about frame rates and it looks great to me, but then again I play games on my PS1, still.

Looks and feels identical to 15. Same combat even. Will play. 15 was amazing

You're nuts. "Graphics" mode is basically locked at 30fps - very rarely dropping to 28fps - and is gorgeous.

"Framerate" mode isn't as solid during exploration, but it's a very steady 60fps during combat.


It's really not very similar to 15 once you unlock more combat options. The combat is much, much more in depth and varied.

I enjoyed 15 a lot, but 16 seems better to me and it avoids the issues 15 had with its story and battle system.

I beat 15. I have no clue what you're talking about.

I played 15 and I didn't like it, but I like this one. The combat in 15 is like a proto-version of this... not even close.

Yeah. Imo this is much better.

Absolutely

I’d agree on this with Yoshi-P. What he did with 14 ARR is nothing short of amazing.

I just finished the game. Overall, it was really good. 9/10 and a contender for GOTY. FF7 Remake aside, it’s probably the best Final Fantasy since 10.

The music is amazing. The voice acting is phenomenal. Combat is really, really good. The story is great.

I do wonder why they went for the "M" rating, though. It seemed unnecessary - obviously some minor changes would have to be made to clean it up, but nothing that really impacted the main story. They also curiously censored things that didn't have to be, given the M rating.

Some issues I had with it:
- The lighting in dark areas is not great. Even turning brightness all the way up doesn’t help.
- Side quests are repetitive. All of them are either basic fetch quests, or “go to place and kill x.” The story associated with most of the quests is well done, but I didn’t really get invested in any of them.
- The crafting system. What crafting system? Why do have literally thousands of crafting materials in my inventory and I can't craft anything?
- Story
Why the multiple time skips? I guess playing young Clive makes sense as a tutorial, but the first ~40% of the story part of the game should have been a flashback, or short intro movie. Move the couple major events that do occur to when he's older. Most of the game's systems don't come online until that point anyway.
- Story (Major end of game spoiler, don't read without beating the game)
Click To View Spoiler
- Story (Major end of game spoiler)
Click To View Spoiler

Final note (Major end of game spoiler and FF15 spoiler)
Click To View Spoiler

ETA: Major end of game spoiler
Click To View Spoiler

Maybe I know what I'm going to do this next week.

The M rating fits. ESRB is "Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Violence"

https://www.esrb.org/ratings/39009/final-fantasy-xvi/

The side quests are generally 50% boring, so I agree with that.

The crafting system is a huge pointless waste of time. Why? I know... MMO developers, that's why. Collect items for reasons. Use items at story junction to upgrade. Rinse-repeat.

It seems like a lot of this game is MMO applications in a single player game. It's a good game, but not a great game. The more I play, the more I see MMO time-wasting mechanics.

I'm starting to not look forward to Eikon battles.

ETA: I'm not reading the whole post, because I don't want the story spoiled.

I understand why the ESRB gave it that rating. I meant I don't know why the FF developers didn't clean it up enough for a T rating. Or, since it rated M anyway, bothered to censor content that wasn't necessarily worse than what is in-game. I don't know exactly where the line is, obviously, but if they removed the swearing and the pseudo-nudity (nothing is ever shown anyway), it seems like that'd be 95% of the way to a T rating.

On the other hand, FF7R took some flak for not showing blood where it existed in the original game.

Good point regarding MMOs/mechanics.

I generally liked the Eikon battles, but they didn't quite live up to the hype. Pre-release info said each Eikon battle had unique mechanics and that's not really true. There's a particular Eikon battle around 80% of the way through the game where they peak, and unfortunately decline slightly afterwards.

I'll be interested to read your thoughts (and other's) after you finish the game.

I heard the writer or director was inspired by Game of Thrones. And let's be honest FF has needed to up the maturity. They probably didn't want to go all the way with nudity because FF is a household name and even M games rarely have nudity.

M with full nudity like the Witcher 3 almost needs another rating.

Fair points.

I won't post any spoilers here.

Having thought about the game for a few days, I'm a bit more lukewarm on the whole experience. My problem with the ending overshadows the overall very positive experience of the rest of the game.

On the story: 85% of the game is really good, 10% not quite as good, and the ending 5% is really bad.

I think objectively the game is an 8.5, because even if you don't mind the ending, you can recognize the shortcomings and poor writing in the game's closing.

The question I ask myself is, "would you recommend this game to a friend?" I guess the answer is generally "yes," because the vast majority of the game is really good, and someone's enjoyment of the ending is subject to taste. I wouldn't recommend this to someone who has never played a Final Fantasy game before, however, because if their reaction to the ending is similar to mine, they'd never play a Final Fantasy game again.

Unfortunately, the bad ending precludes me from playing NG+, and I won't consider any DLC (though they said the game is complete "as is").

This will probably end up being one of the most divisive entries in the series, though I guess they all are in their own way.

I'm 75% of the way through my first playthrough and I'm between a 7/10 and an 8/10. It's a good game, but some of the mechanics are wearing thin like the time-gated equipment, unnecessarily long fetch quests and pointless crafting system. The items in the world seem to be 90% crafting materials, which are unneeded, and 2 Gil.

I'm okay with the QTEs in moderation and I think the Titan fight was an example of absurdity and just annoyed me.

I don't think I'll be interested in re-playing after this playthrough and go back to working on FF7R platinum and completing Zelda: BotW.

I'm at 60%. It's not perfect but I'm still enjoying it. I like the cinematic QTE's.

I can see how they appeal.

It is one of the best implementations of QTE I've played, I'm just not a fan in general.

Just beat it. I won't post any spoilers. It took me 68 hours and the PS5 shows 90% completion after beating the first playthrough.

Crafting and equipment systems suck and at least half of the side quests suck.

Main story is very good, ending is going to be divisive. In general, I do not like the ending.

Combat is simple, yet fun as well as the eikon ability system. If you do everything throughout the game, you'll be slightly over-powered and battles will tend to be easy, including boss fights.

Frame rates would crash periodically, even on Frame Rate mode.

Attached File

Finally beat it. I skipped all of the side content. So the playthrough was very fast. I like the story including the ending.

2 DLC announced tonight at Game Awards.

1st shadow dropped and is available now

2nd is coming this Spring.

Looks like the 2nd DLC is going to bring Leviathan into the game.

Supposedly they take place before the final battle. I don't know how interested I am; probably going to pass on these.

Very cool. I'm REALLY looking forward to 7R but I might have to check this out in the meantime.