The Final Fantasy Thread

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Berrakh said:
There used to be so much freedom in the cultural discourse of Western Nations.

Now they criticize jrpgs for not having properly depicted womyn and jrpg fans call them racist for criticizing something foreign.
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Then: “JRPGs suck because they’re gay and full of twinks.”
Now: “Why JRPGs need more twink protagonists to combat toxic masculinity.”
 
SSj_Ness said:
Wow, I'm surprised that ever came from a homosexual looking soyboy.
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There was also this
images (1) (1).jpeg


I'm also surprised no one calls out IGN or Scott Bromley for similar comments

 
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Finally (hurr) beat Final Fantasy XVI, doing absolutely everything short of replaying the game in ranked stages and Final Fantasy Mode in about 80 hours. And by everything, that includes autistically running around population centers to get all the dialogue every time there seems to be a new update, which can even happen multiple times in one side quest. Wanted to get down some thoughts for posterity.

Overall, the game was... fine. There were parts of it that I enjoyed. I don't regret playing the game, and it's definitely better than FFXV in almost every aspect. But it's also worse than FFVII Remake in almost every aspect, and I find it difficult to recommend over plenty of other fantasy action or roleplaying games.

For this post, I'll just elaborate on the gameplay.

For a start, combat was for the most part monotonous, mostly coming down to dumping my six equipped abilities whenever they're off cooldown else I'm losing out on damage output. Furthermore, it feels like half of the available abilities are bad choices bringing down my DPS. Normal mobs are just punching bags that barely attack, and large enemies are the same but with an occasional dodge. Only significant villain bosses are particularly interesting to fight with all of the attacks they throw out. Party members might as well not exist at all considering their lack of impact in battle.

While Eikon battles are mechanically simple, they're very high on unique spectacle and rare enough such that they don't get boring. They remind me a lot of the Capcom game Asura's Wrath, a game that I really adore and wish to see ported to Steam. After the escalation peaks with Bahamut fight, however, the remaining few Eikon battles become disappointments with much smaller scope in comparison. Considering the very first thing you do in the game is fight as Phoenix, I was hoping that you'd continue to play as other allied Eikons in a variety of matchups through the game, but unfortunately that never really happens.

The open world areas are dull, populated only with punching bag normal mobs and sparse chests of useless excess crafting items for a very basic crafting system. Mostly not interesting to look at, either. When it comes to it, the open world only really exists to place hunt bosses and side quest objective locations.

Speaking of side quests, I think they're the game's biggest detriment. What was most apparent to me was how backloaded they are, really throwing off how close I thought I was to the end of the game based on the PS5 menu's main quest % completion display. Hell, between the last two main quests, you're piled with a literal dozen side quests that'll take about 4 hours to get through. If you're compelled to do all the side quests (like me), then they really kills the pacing of the game's back half. If you don't, then a lot of supporting characters are left undeveloped. With the pool of side quests being a mixed bag of significance, I have to imagine that a lot of players end up swearing off side quests after being bored by some of the more filler ones, only to then miss out the ones about characters they would've appreciated. The side quest format does no favors in this, a sequence of talking to indicated NPCs, doing a basic combat encounter or two, and picking flowers. It's very MMO-like, the FFXIV devs obviously doing what they know, but it drags even more with voiced dialogue when you'd ordinarily speedily read (or skip) text.

I'll talk about story stuff later.
 
I was trying to figure out the problem with FF16 besides the side quests and I just now got it.
Lack of varied music and lack of varied weapon design.

I get that soken is busy but they can hire more then one sound guy. Most fights have the same dam 5 themes. Like am I crazy or is my game bugged? Where the hell is all the music? 14 and KH had different themes for every boss but it feels like everybody shares in this.

It takes FAR FAR too long to get new weapons and ability's. They just did not do a good enough job and it was only after beating the final human primal enemy (80 percent into the game) that you get an alternative to the bog standard sword that actually feels great. Transparent ripoff of DMC yamato but i'll take it. They should have given each primal a unique weapon to switch back and forth to replace the sword.

Frankly The game's great up until
Cid dies
less then halfway Then the magic kinda goes away and you got filler and side quests up the ass. Probably would be best to ignore most of them except for the important Cross shaped ones and just go though the main story to enjoy it as is.

The lore is kinda shit too. There's not enough FANTASY in this game. They took way too many notes from game of thrones and barely did anything with the environment besides give people crystals, and have superhuman summons walking around. There's no exotic races besides goblins and orcs. With Literally only one moogle in the game. The only time my ears perked up lore wise is whenever anybody mentioned the mainland content. info on it is incredibly vague and I literally had to play most of the side quests to learn that they don't treat their magic users like garbage. I read between the lines and am forced to conclude the land in 16 is the FF14 world equivalent of new Zealand (before the 7th calamity) until further notice.


Didn't help they intentionally toned down one of Jill's best moments of killing a rapist by only vaguely implying what he did in the american version.

https://boundingintocomics.com/2023...f-iron-kingdoms-treatment-of-female-captives/

Another thing that annoyed me. When you're fighting odin he gets really really religious and lays it on thick. Calling his master "lord" and "God" and really going for the evil christian roleplay and trying to convert you. And clive is laying it on thick with "NOT NEEDING GOD!" I hated it.

I know I know. Killing a "god" is a big part of these kinds of games, and im cool with that, but this was really really pushing it hard enough to make me wonder if an atheist script writer was screwing with the script like the above example with jill. Id like to hear the jap translation.

Im not finished yet, and I am starting to really enjoy the end, but this needed more put in it.
 
Michael Wade said:
I get that soken is busy but they can hire more then one sound guy. Most fights have the same dam 5 themes. Like am I crazy or is my game bugged? Where the hell is all the music? 14 and KH had different themes for every boss but it feels like everybody shares in this.
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I know I complained about bad orchestra samples earlier in the thread, but 16 really confirmed in one of my hottest takes: I really don't think Soken is a great composer. I think he's a workhorse and is rightly credited for having a great work ethic when it comes to writing a large volume of music, but as far as compositional talent goes he's a bog standard jrock-turned-game composer guy who has some really big hits but so much is just arrangements of the same few things that weren't that inspired in the first place. We all love the prelude, but at this point he's used it so much that it feels like he can't come up with compelling new material. Compare how he uses the Main Theme several times and each time it's just kind of a generic arrangement to Shimomura using it to close 15 and turning it into one of her signature soaring piano features and making the end of a mediocre-at-best game a worthwhile scene. That's not even bringing up Uematsu, who was a guy who wanted to be a rockstar and ended up being able to write a million memorable melodies on the spot whenever they were needed.

I was really excited to hear a full score from Soken from scratch and without the baggage of 14, and ended up just realizing that Soken is like a lot of stuff from 14: more or less fine, but massively overhyped by a community that worships their devs as the best to ever live and cannot stand the idea that they have flaws. Which may be a decent summary of 16 now that I think about it.
 
Can't reply so
There's not enough FANTASY in this game. They took way too many notes from game of thrones and barely did anything with the environment besides give people crystals, and have superhuman summons walking around. There's no exotic races besides goblins and orcs. With Literally only one moogle in the game.
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Yeah, they really fumbled the ball here. I was surprised by how tiny the bestiary is. Including only a single moogle - one of the staple FF creatures - was a bizarre and incredibly lazy choice. And having a desert area but no cactuars??? I think they were so caught up in capturing the grimdark Game of Thrones vibe that they wanted to minimize as much lightheartedness as possible.

I like the game overall and am on a second playthrough for completionist's sake, but there are several areas that should've been expanded upon to make it actually feel like Final Fantasy.
 
Is Square still feuding with the Gooch? I think now would be a good time to try and rebuild that bridge.
 
Privilege Power Hour said:
I know I complained about bad orchestra samples earlier in the thread, but 16 really confirmed in one of my hottest takes: I really don't think Soken is a great composer. I think he's a workhorse and is rightly credited for having a great work ethic when it comes to writing a large volume of music, but as far as compositional talent goes he's a bog standard jrock-turned-game composer guy who has some really big hits but so much is just arrangements of the same few things that weren't that inspired in the first place. We all love the prelude, but at this point he's used it so much that it feels like he can't come up with compelling new material. Compare how he uses the Main Theme several times and each time it's just kind of a generic arrangement to Shimomura using it to close 15 and turning it into one of her signature soaring piano features and making the end of a mediocre-at-best game a worthwhile scene. That's not even bringing up Uematsu, who was a guy who wanted to be a rockstar and ended up being able to write a million memorable melodies on the spot whenever they were needed.

I was really excited to hear a full score from Soken from scratch and without the baggage of 14, and ended up just realizing that Soken is like a lot of stuff from 14: more or less fine, but massively overhyped by a community that worships their devs as the best to ever live and cannot stand the idea that they have flaws. Which may be a decent summary of 16 now that I think about it.
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The themes are great, It's just there simply isn't enough variety. I never felt like he was cribbing notes from 14 so much as spacing a couple good new songs over a 60 hour game.

You have to understand Soken was working on this and FF14 at the same time, so he had to compromise somewhere. Frankly I dont blame him for half assing a lot of 16. 14 is where the money is and They are good songs, It's just that anything good gets old after a while.

I just wish every boss fight had a song as good as this.


This is played only once and it smashes.
 
Berrakh said:
Now they criticize jrpgs for not having properly depicted womyn and jrpg fans call them racist for criticizing something foreign.
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its funny both sides can not comprehend that asia and the west have diferent cultures and what is morally ok. like weebs can not grasp that western culture for the longest time and even now looks down at sexualizing minors, while weseterners don't get that asia doesn't care that much. wheter one side is right or not is debatable, but a lot of that shitflinging needs to be viewed in the lens of different culture groups. but do we expect both sides to admit that? no
 
Apathetic Luigi said:
like weebs can not grasp that western culture for the longest time and even now looks down at sexualizing minors
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True, but it should be made clear that the biggest hoopla is being made primarily in America, which is pretty down on sexualization in general, and the Anglosphere to a lesser extent. Europe and South America don't really care all that much, and Europe is less prudish towards teens and kids in regards to sex in general.
 
The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
True, but it should be made clear that the biggest hoopla is being made primarily in America, which is pretty down on sexualization in general, and the Anglosphere to a lesser extent. Europe and South America don't really care all that much, and Europe is less prudish towards teens and kids in regards to sex in general.
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The left is plenty less prudish on sexualizing minors in America.
 
It's funny to hear people act like twink protagonists are holding FF back while Zelda sells a billion copies with a faggy elf lead
 
ChefKiss said:
It's funny to hear people act like twink protagonists are holding FF back while Zelda sells a billion copies with a faggy elf lead
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Link only became faggy in the most recent couple games, he was a pretty standard looking hero before.
 
Berrakh said:
I hate to do it but the grooming stuff has scared them off of it. Leaving Matt Walsh to argue against the age of consent for God Knows what reason.
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I don't see Matt Walsh doing that, unless you're referring to the time nearly 20 years ago that he parroted some misinformation about fertility.

The Demon Pimp of Razgriz said:
They are also quite hypocritical about it, being okay with drag queen story hour, but deriding anime as being for pedos.
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Yeah, that's a crazy thing to say about anime when Cuties exists, even the most perverted hentai isn't as bad as that was because in the end it's cartoons vs real life.

I wish Netflix had been given the Bud Light treatment over that, or that the director was arrested, but nothing happened, as expected.
 
Final Fantasy was sort of the introduction to child-me to the idea that if a story is told with sufficient pacing (JRPG drip feed), participation, and media, you can find yourself accepting it even if it doesn't make much sense when you start actually thinking about it.

In FF7, for example, you're basically playing as the bad guys. Your hippie eco-terrorist group is just about as aimlessly destructive as it's namesake. At one point, the protagonists foil the big evil corporation's evil plot to ... uh ... save the world from the giant asteroid of doom ... for reasons. The nominal bad guy faction (Shinra?) (aside from one legitimately evil plot from some military holdover of the old regime) is mostly just self-interested and unethical in its research programs. They like things like not having giant Kaiju stomp their cities, not having giant asteroids destroy their planet, not having rogue supersoldiers going on murder sprees, and not having mewling eco nuts blowing up their powerplants. And unlike the protagonists, they'll take constructive action to attempt to effect their desires.

I mean, if you lived in a world that ocassionally manifests giant freaking kaiju to uncaringly wipe out the works of man, you might be a little less than concerned that your main energy technology is throttling dear "mother" nature.

(I've only really followed the series up to 8 or 9):

I sort of like how dream-logic the plots and worldbuilding can be though. They aren't the best on coherence (though 3 was good), because it just keeps unfolding in whatever random dream-logic direction occurs next. But it's creative, and not easy to anticipate. The worlds are these grab bags of random elements that then try to gel.

A lot different than ripping off Tolkein for the zillionth time.

Reminds me vaguely of the dream-logic insanity in Frank Baum Oz novels. You never quite know where things will go.
 
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