Spoiler Thread - For those who have finished the game.

[Loony BoB]

This thread can be used to freely discuss the game once you've finished it. You can feel free to post unmarked spoilers about ANYTHING in the game in this thread.

...So.

Hmm. I'm still digesting it a little, the credits are rolling. EDIT: Oh, credits just ended and there's a post-credits scene. Let's see what happens... eh, okay. Nothing to add there. Not gonna bother with New Game + either.

I don't really like that our character dies in the end. I kind of felt it might happen but I definitely didn't want it to happen. Not because I was deeply connected to the character or anything, but because I feel like he and Jill deserved to get their overseas journey. It would be cool if after these credits, Clive shows up on a boat with one rock hand, but otherwise okay.

The ending fight wasn't tough but I'm generally of the opinion that ending fights never really should be terribly difficult, just epic. And it did decently on that. It's still not even close to my favourite fight in the game, which for me goes to the Garuda battle, followed closely by Titan and Bahamut battles, and then the Svargos hunt because the scale made it look great.

By the end of the game it felt far more like a Final Fantasy game than it did in the first 30 minutes, so I'm happy for that. But it was still missing some seriously massive components for me, and I hope the next Final Fantasy won't be moving even further into the Soulslike genre. I want my cactuars, my victory fanfare, my full chocobo theme, stuff like that for me is just core to it all. Didn't even have a tonberry or a mandragora, now that I think about it. At least they managed to fit in one moogle, and a touch of lore about it.

I'm very much annoyed that they made eight magicks and then completely wrote off water/Leviathan. Like, why? At least explain it. It was never explained at all. Sigh. When Ultima was rolling off all the magicks, he neglected water entirely too, which made no sense because he didn't absorb the magick from Clive, he had them from the get-go. I was half wondering if Ultima was going to go "Water!" and Clive was going to go "wait no" or something. Speaking of amusing moments, Ultima's "Oh." to Bahamut firing around the side to him as he died was great. The lack of any notable attention to Dion's death was a bit of a shame but I get the reasoning (needing to keep things moving).

I like that we end with the baby and the howling, but I still would 100% prefer to end with Clive turning up after all. I like my Final Fantasy games to have genuinely happy endings, not this bittersweet trout. Oh well, as I say, the credits are still rolling, so who knows how I'll feel about it tomorrow. But generally, Final Fantasy as a series hasn't been the best at endings anyway.

As for where this ranks in the series, I'd say the overarching plot was good, the ending let it down, it was the least "Final Fantasy" game in the series... best cinematics in the series, tied only with Final Fantasy XIV's highest detail cinematics. I'd say it still beats the first three games as an overall game. I'm not sure I'd put it above much of the mid to late games in the series right now just because I'm annoyed about the ending. I suppose it might have a good duel in my brain with FFXV for right of placement, because it has some things better, some things worse. But I think FFXV still beats it because the overall gameplay was far more diverse than just "fight stuff". The sidequests were way too numerous at the very end for my liking, too. I never like it, even in FFXIV, when five or more quests pop up immediately after you finish a MSQ. I liked it when there were 2-5 around the world, but I think there were something like 10-20 (it felt like it, anyway) just before Origin.

If they had put in some good writing regarding Leviathan (or just added him in), had Clive turn up at the last moment for feel-good factor, and added a fishing game or something... could be right up there. It did better with the potential in many areas than FFXIII did with it's quite frankly huge potential, but there are still so many areas in which FFXVI just dropped the ball.

The scene before we go to Origin was nicely done.

Best character: Mid and Benedikta, tied. Gav was excellent too. Byron along with basically every major character within the Hideaway were great too.
Best fight: Benedikta. Titan and Bahamut after that. EDIT in July 2024: wtf was I on? Titan, absolutely Titan first.
Best plot point: I'm not sure I can think of many "oh trout" moments that happened? Us being Ifrit was a surprise to me, idk if people had that known before the game was released but I avoided the demo and news on the series for a long time.
Best music: For the moment it was played: Titan fight, easily. For overall, songs I would listen to a lot because I like the music? None spring to mind. They were all solid though. EDIT in July 2024: Find the Flames!
Best area: I loved the oasis area. The water was so pretty. None of the areas gave me prominent 'fantasy' vibes though, everything was very much based on reality, blight aside.
Best town: New Hideaway, easily. I'm not a huge fan of generic medieval towns, and none of them really gave me much in terms of atmosphere because the tone was dictated so heavily by current events rather than current location.
Best chocobo: Ambrosia obviously, although the colouring on the comet addict was the best aesthetically.
Best boi: Torgul

[Psychotic]

The more this game went on, the more it abandoned its attempts to emulate Thrones and became much more of a Final Fantasy. It was a surprisingly wholesome last few hours with building of relationships with other characters and helping them out, and the touching send off scene. They even threw in that trope of all your friends wishing you well in the final battle, as many others (my favourite one doing it being IV) have done.

And then, y'know, you fight God. As you do in FF. Story and tone-wise, it almost felt like the most Final Fantasyish of Final Fantasys at that point, which is a real shift from the first half of the game which was a never ending conga line of bleakness, misery and war crimes.

Like BoB I was hoping Clive would pull a Zidane/Tidus "psyche!" ending fakeout but eh, it's fine as it is.

Overall thoughts-
The presentation - music, graphics, voice acting - is all superb but very rarely does Final Fantasy ever miss on this front. The main overarching plot and general writing of dialogue and scenes is among the very best in the series if not, dare I say it, the very best.

It falls a little bit flat with characters, to an extent. Clive is a reasonable enough FF protagonist and is voice acted with real feeling and emotion at times. With such a limited party - generic protag and his dog - they put a lot of eggs in the Jill basket and for a character with so much screen time there's just... nothing to her. A lot of likeable side characters and friends in the Hideaway like Gav, Otto, Byron, Goetz et al, though I never really was won over by our wider cast such as Martha, the Dame, and L'ubor.

The side antagonists like Benedikta, Hugo Kupka, the emperor and Barnabas were all interesting and entertaining enough, but Ultima as that overarching villain doesn't really do much for me being a pure charisma void.

As for ranking it, it definitely is one of the best single player main title FFs they've done in years, surpassing XII, XIII and XV for me. I kept wanting to play this game and thinking about this game when I wasn't playing it, but with some of the above listed titles I had to push myself through certain drudge or bad parts of the game. I found myself wanting to do every sidequest and every mark, I was hungry for more. With that said, I don't think I'm in the mood to do New Game+ or replay the thing any time soon. It's... a lot.

Overall, I think a good game, a good FF. Some interesting ideas executed well, a few areas lacking. Not the pinnacle of the series, but far from the disappointments of other recent entries.

[DK]

Took me a while to get round to finishing the game but I finally got it done last night and, man. That was certainly a ride.

You could see the sacrifice of the Rosfield boys coming a mile off but still didn't make it any easier to accept. That whole finale was pretty epic indeed, although the Ultima/Ifrit space battle was just stupid. (I mean it looked great, but I legit had no idea what was going on or what I was doing, Ultima's just spamming galactic kamehameha's and somehow I'm tanking it all and just spamming attack.)

I still don't think it was very Final Fantasy-ish, but it was definitely a great game. I'm glad that Squenix have shown that they still have the capability in their locker to drop a AAA banger that is on point from launch day.

I agree largely with Pauw's sentiments about presentation and characters. Ultima in particular was just a bit meh, they didn't do a great job of generating that desire to put him down (which is weird, because they do a really good job of that in FFXIV). But I did like a lot of the Hideaway crew and grew geniunely attatched to a lot of them.

I liked a lot of the direction - In particular, they were pretty intelligent in their use of FF nostalgia throughout the game. They didn't overdo it, and so it was always a nice suprise when something came up (e.g Mid casually referencing "Bartz the Builder"). And the few times they chose to use the Final Fantasy theme in cutscenes was an emotional gut punch every time for me. And I actually still love the soundtrack, it's one of the strongest for me.

It's kind of hard for me to rank this against the other series games because it's such a departure from what it's known for. I'd have to rate it above XII, XIII and XV because I couldn't finish those because I didn't enjoy them enough. Hell, as a game experience I'd say I probably enjoyed it more than most FF games bar OG VII and I know that's just down to the nostalgia. But then as a "Final Fantasy" game I don't think I could rate it above many either. I did also get the sense halfway through playing it that I don't know if I'll ever want to play it again - as much as I enjoyed it, the experience of it was really the best part. Without the sense of fascination and drive to experience the narrative at every new turn, I don't want to go through that soulgrinding opening half of the game again any time soon. And that's kind of disappointing because a good FF is something that I can play time and time again.

I think the best way I can put it is - during the finale and ending, I had a clear vision for several ideas of ways they could build into this new lore, indirect sequels etc. And I really want to see it in the future!

[Example]

Having finally beaten this game, I would say I liked it but not loved it. I honestly would have no idea how to rank it in the series, even when directly compared to just the previous game; XV was better than XVI in the first half but worse in the second half, and while the plot was messier the characters were more interesting, likeable and fleshed out, and had better chemistry and group dynamic. And it goes without saying that Ardyn was a much more compelling villain than Ultima or anyone else in XVI. Gameplay-wise they're both pretty easy and simplistic, but that holds true for pretty much every other FF ever, but XVI probably requires slightly more thought and effort on your part. Honestly I would say I prefer XV but only by a hairline.

EDIT: Can't believe I almost forgot about Clive doing the "The only FANTASY here is yours, and we shall be its FINAL witness!" title drop, that literally made me laugh out loud.

[immaculategrid]

great

[Example]

great

great

[Beowulf]

I'm slightly late to the party, but....

The ending just. I don't know. I didn't like it. The whole "open to interpretation" thing just doesn't do it for me with a game that was as deep as this one was.

[Del Murder]

Final battle: I agree with BoB that it was not hard nor should it be. I like some challenge for a last boss but it shouldn’t be the hardest fight of the game. It’s more about the emotion and spectacle which this gave off greatly. The part where Ultima summoned every Eikon’s powers and Clive countered with his own was amazing. The actual Eikon battle was too confusing with so much screen filling attacks and that we were in space.

Ending: I did not like it. It still doesn’t make sense to me why they did what they did, other than to stop Ultima who is evil. The post magic world in the epilogue doesn’t seem so great. Clive dying also doesn’t seem to leave a satisfactory end to his story but at least it fit the plot. I wish we saw
More about how the hideout characters got on after the finale and how this world rebuilt. This world did not give me enough to care about it.

General: The game was fun. The story and dialogue were some of the best written in FF. I agree it felt more like an FF in the last third. The fighting was very fluid for an action game though I wish there were some non action ways to win battles. I also wish there was more than fighting or wandering for the quests and activities.

[Example]

So did anyone else finish both DLCs? Echoes of the Fallen was ok but The Rising Tide was actually pretty good.

[Loony BoB]

I've played the first. What an absolute banger of a track. Loved it.

[Del Murder]

I may try rising tide though it irks me that Leviathan wasn't part of the main story. I have plenty of other games to play before I go back to one I already played.