Hey, remember when I used to review video games?

Well, I never did it very much, since I do not finish video games very often, and even less often do I feel strongly enough about them to sit down and write something. Also, whenever I have the energy to return to this blog, I usually continue on my sisyphean quest to finish the Moby Dick project. But no longer! It’s time for another one!

Final Fantasy XVI is the latest game in a long series, which is mostly characterized by every entry being very different, and this one is no different in that regard. Of course, a bunch of idiots have come out of the woodwork to attack for not being a “real” entry in the series, which is absurd, and I simply refuse to take it seriously at all.

People are out here complaining about the lack of turn-based battles, as if there’s even been an entry with turn-based battles in the last two decades.

That is not to say that I think the game is perfect, by any means. I enjoyed it a great deal, but the gameplay has… some flaws. Let’s get into the nit and grit of it.

Gamplay

Not Quite DMC

The combat is… seriveable. It has a certain lack of variety that is somewhat frustrating, especially as you get towards the end of the game.

You have a suite of abilities that are nice and flashy, but no variety for normal attacks, and the long cooldowns taught me, early on, to save my big attacks for when a large enemy was staggered. There are basically only two kinds of enemies: weak ones that you can toss around like ragdolls, basically no threat at all, and strong enemies with a stagger meter.

It was fun, in the early going, to stylishly beat up those weaker enemies, but towards the end it just became a slog. Every combat encounter feels fundamentally the same, there’s nothing really pushing the player to experiment beyond boredom.

That said, it is, in fact, perfectly serviceable, and I really appreciated the “cheat” rings you get, that automate or ease certain aspects of the game. I used them mostly like training wheels, using them more early on and then abandoning them as I got better at the game.

Also, the equipment system feels utterly meaningless. It’s like the polar opposite of a Diablo or a Nioh, you get vanishingly few new pieces of equipment, and never have any interesting decisions to make. Abilities are slightly more interesting, which ones to upgrade and equip, there’s some fun optimization there, but nothing compared to, say, the job system in Final Fantasy V.

MMO Roots

The game’s biggest flaw, by far, is the structure of sidequests.

A bit of context is necessary: this game was developed by Square-Enix Creative Business Unit 3, better known for their work on Final Fantasy XIV, the MMORPG, which I may have discussed once or twice in the past. You can see the DNA of that game all over this one, in the language and themes and the way things are structured.

Sometimes this is harmless and charming, like making the player press a button to hand over the object of a sidequest to the questgiver instead of just automating the process. This is a staple of MMOs going way back, due to the way their inventory systems work. Completely unnecessary here, but it never gets in the way of anything.

In FFXIV, sidequests are omnipresent, and mostly serve as an extension of the world, rather than an integral part of gameplay. They are something to do if you want to learn more about an area, want an excuse to run around, or are just bored and waiting for a duty queue to pop. So, it’s perfectly fine that there are a lot of them, they are pretty boring, and they pop up during key moments in the story when you really shouldn’t be dawdling around.

They work… the same way in FFXVI, and it’s kind of a problem.

As a veteran of all five expansions of that MMO, I soldiered on through every last one of them, and was rewarded with a lot of thematic depth and great storytelling. Unfortunately, the early sidequests are direly boring and the rewards are all but meaningless. They feel like something to be endured, and like the game is teaching you that you can safely ignore all of these unless you’re a completionist.

Friends, this is not the case. It is absolutely critical that you finish each and every last sidequest if you want to get the full experience of this game. Some of the best writing and thematic notes are found in these sidequests! And they’re mostly boring and ponderous, gameplay-wise!

The Allure of Spectacle

As for the much-vaunted eikon battles, I gotta say, they live up to the hype, but I’ve seen it done better.

There isn’t enough variety in them, and the spectacle peaks well before the end of the game, leading the final boss to feel like a bit of a letdown. Platinum is a developer who is an expert at this kind of thing, and this game’s efforts pale in comparison to something like The Wonderful 101 in those regards.

But yeah, there’s some downright incredible shit there. I don’t want to give you the idea that it’s a disappointment, just another area where… the game’s mechanics are not as polished as one would hope. It feels a bit misshapen, a bit sloppy at times, which is unusual for something so grand and prestigious as a new blockbuster game on the Playstation 5!

Writing

Anti-Authority: The Video Game

I cannot emphasize this enough: This is the most anti-monarchist fantasy story I have read in my life. And I read a lot of Redwall as a kid, so that’s really saying something.

There’s been some griping about this game losing its thematic thrust towards the end, but I think that is a result of people either a) not following the themes because they are taking them too literally or b) not doing the damn sidequests (oh my god they’re so important, do the sidequests!).

This game is about how people having authority over others and trying to control things in a top-down way leads to utter devastation and death in 100% of cases. There is no “good king”. There is no glorious monarch coming back to restore things to the way they should be. There are people banding together to rebuild a better world from the ashes of the old one.

It makes no bones about this being a painless process. It basically requires the apocalypse to happen, or near enough. Social order has to break down. People have to dies and suffer horribly. But in the end, you can unshackle yourself from the sins of the past and move towards something better.

Lostwing: A Microcosm

It’s hard to discuss the whole plot of a 40 hour long RPG in total without writing ten thousand words, so let me key into one small aspec that I feel is a good representation: the Lostwing quests.

In the world of FFXVI, there are people called “bearers”, who have the ability to channel magic powers from their own bodies, and from the world around them. They are treated as non-humans, and are thus kept in chattel slavery basically everywhere. Anyone can be born like this, but when they’re discovered they are seized by the state and put in chains.

Nautrally, there are people who see that this is obviously wrong, and those are the good guys. Unambiguously. The game makes no bones about this, there are no good slaveholders, and you spend a lot of time hanging out with what is essentially Fantasy John Brown (Cid, in this case).

You come across a little village where a large number of escaped bearers are making a go of it, called Lostwing. They are squatting in some ancient ruins, but they are well-organized and grow grapes to make wine which they trade with others through proxies. It’s a nice little respite, in a harsh world. They are allies, but somewhat uneasy ones, they don’t want to paint targets on their back by being too open about supporting bandits and revolutionaries.

The leader of this village is named Quinten. Not a bearer himself, you learn late in the game that he was once a judge in one of the large nations that is rapidly disintegrating as the fantasy apocalypse happens.

Now, this nation, the Empire of SanBreque has launched an extermination campaign against bearers. Or, some elements have, and those elements have now found Lostwing! Quinten takes this news… and reveals that he has known this was coming, and it’s time for them to take action.

You see, the whole existence of the village is an elaborate revenge plot. They have been plotting against a corrupt judge in SanBreque this whole time, who had Quinten’s family killed, and is now behind this genocidal new faction. He gathers the villages and they begin taking arms and making their grim plans. The women and children and injured are sent away to the vineyards, to wait out this struggle.

Eventually, you help him have his revenge, at the cost of many lives.

Then… you convince him to go back and rebuild. The people left behind, at the vineyards, still need his guidance. They are build another village, there are still people he is responsible for. He is shocked, but must agree and goes back to return to his position as mayor.

And then, you come back again to call on his expertise to help negotiate some new terms for an agreement between the pillars of the last remaining stable government in the world (the only republic, natch). He accepts, and with his rhetorical skill helps to bring about the beginning of a new age that will be more equitable to all, not only his small village.

Vengeance is Not the End

The idea here is that there is no final, glorious act of sacrifice. The world doesn’t stop when you think you have reached the end of your personal narrative, and the facts of the world are not dictated by that narrative.

Authoratarianism is driven by pure ideology. The idea that there is a correct order of things, which dictates how things must be, rather than building up from the bottom. You do not start with facts, you start with the idea that someone has to be in charge, and use some means to determine who that should be.

There is no magic of authority. There is nothing at the core of it. It only exists in your head.

This game literalizes that idea, in its fantasy world, by having the magic and the bearers be just another tool of someone with a master plan who is trying to control the world to conform to their private narrative of how things are supposed to go.

ENDING SPOILERS START HERE: The Truth

The absolute evil of the monarchy and authoratarian thinking in general is show in Waloed.

King Barnabas kills every man, woman, and child in his whole kingdom because they are just tools to him. They exist only to fulfill the narrative in his mind, the story he’s been told all his life about his glorious destiny. It’s the same as Joshua and Clive’s mother, who throws them away in pursuit of a perfectly hollow dream.

The idea of literally killing everyone in a kingdom except the king is the kind of excess and clarity you can only get in a fantasy story like this. I love it so much. There’s nobody left! Except one symbolic mother, who escapes with her child still in her womb to live on as the hope for the future. Not in the name of her king, but in the name of her people, in the name of herself.

Then they escalate even further with Ultima, who wants to kill the entire human race, because he sees them all as livestock, essentially. He is amazed that they have achieved “logos”, the ability to think. So lesser and incomplete, he cannot even conceive of them as mattering as much as his lost kin. So he will repeat the sins of the past in order to bring it back to life.

Rather than exulting in this new flowering of society and culture and love that exists because of his actions, he wants to throw it all away because he has a plan. He knows what is supposed to happen, and he’s going to stick to it.

The theme of mastership and slavery extends beyond the literal chattel slaves. All of humanity is a slave to those who style themselves gods. Bearers are treated horribly by their owners and by the state, the state and general populace are treated horribly by the rulers, and the rulers are treated horribly by the dominants, the holders of the grand magical power to level entire cities. But even they are mere pack animals lugging around magical power for Ultima, the perfect slavemaster, who would cut the throats of all humanity on a whim.

Hope Springs Eternal

I’ve seen some upset at the ending of this game, thinking that the fate of Clive is too grim, and goes against established themes. But I found it extremely appropriate, and very hopeful.

You must fight to save a sunrise you will never see. Selfish ideology, clinging to your narratives of personal importance, are meaningless in the face of the passage of time. The story has no end! Once the fantasy has been finished, there is only a real life to be lived.

I feel as though I’ve barely even scratched the surface of this game’s thematic depth. There’s so much good shit goin’ on here, I could write a whole book about it. Ah, it makes me wish there was more serious scholarship about games on the individual level, but alas! Such things don’t really happen.