(Spoiler alert ahead!)
Final Fantasy XVI is a masterpiece. Is it perfect? No. But is it brilliant? Absolutely.
I know, among the “not my Final Fantasy” crowd the character action gameplay is divisive. I’m not going to say they’re wrong for feeling the way they do. However, the action is so tight, so responsive, the combat is so satisfying, that I do feel pity that they hold on to the past so tightly they can’t live for the future. This is a poignant piece of FFXVI and its message, by the way, it’s rather poetic but we’ll get to that later.
FFXVI tells the story of two brothers, Clive and Joshua Rosfield. The younger brother, Joshua, is selected by some divine providence to serve as the “Dominant” of the Pheonix, an Eikon. Eikons, in FFXVI parlance, are traditional Final Fantasy summons from series history. The Pheonix, in this case, means that Clive, while being the elder brother, is passed over for the inheritance of his father’s Duchy in favor of Joshua, something that their mother spurns him for due to Joshua’s sickly constitution.
As the story progresses it is revealed that Clive is also a dominant, this is perhaps why he didn’t inherit the Pheonix in the first place. He is the dominant of Ifrit, something which goes against the understanding of the world since there is only meant to be a single Eikon for each element and here he represents a second Eikon of fire alongside is brother’s Pheonix.
The world in which our characters live, Valisthea, has a rich and interesting history. A history that is mostly told through text by two NPCs but which does come up as references during various plot points. It’s a good approach, honestly, since a more casual player isn’t expected to know this information to follow the plot but those who dig in deep can read up and get a little extra out of the story by knowing more context.
The Eikons are treated as weapons of war. The blessing of the Crystals which grants this immense magical power to people is also, however, destroying the land. The Blight, a kind of magical disease or death, spreads over the land pushing rival kingdoms together and forcing them to fight over ever more scare resources, leaning on their Eikons more and more, which in turn is hastening the death of the very earth they fight over. In an early cutscene two kingdoms are squaring up to fight, the Dominant of Bahamut appears which causes the opposing side to reveal the Dominant of Odin, the two hold each other in check while their armies slaughter one another below.
Clive’s journey, without spoiling too much, revolves around discovering the meaning of his selection as the dominant of Ifrit, an Eikon for which there is no conventional explanation in his world. As it happens, he is meant to become a vessel for all the Eikons as, after defeating Garuda he discovers that he can absorb the powers of other dominants to use aspects of their Eikon himself.
There is a slavery plot at play in Valisthea, its one that Clive falls into when he is taken to be a soldier by a rival faction. Pressed into service and marked with a tattoo on his cheek, Clive becomes what is known as a “Branded” or a “Bearer” depending on the regional parlance. In Valisthea there is magic, but it isn’t for everyone. Only certain people are born with the ability to use it, these people are marked and kept as slaves, families abandon babies born with the gift of magic. Mothers give up their children to slavery and erase their children from their minds. Clive, in the midst of this society, meets a man named Cid who would undo this oppressive system, and leads our protagonist into the life of an outlaw.
The plot revolves around the downtrodden, escaped slaves, trying to fight their oppressors and change the world so their suffering can end. To give the people the ability to live life on their own terms, to choose how they live and die, to be free of the so-called blessing that the crystals offer. As the plot progresses it becomes apparent that a greater force is at work, that a god-like entity is pulling the strings, that our heroes are battling against the forces of nihilism and fear, loneliness and doubt, that the world requires more than a hero. It requires a revolution.
And that is what FFXVI itself represents. Revolution. Change. Gone are the days where you pick abilities and skills off a menu. Where casting a spell plays a little sound effect while a sprite dances about your opponents. Forget about your characters standing in a nice little line and patiently awaiting your command. It’s time to fight, and its going to be visceral.
The combat system in FFXVI is deceptively simple. Clive can be equipped with 3 Eikons, each Eikon has several abilities you can equip and swap between. You can freely change between the 3 on the fly and each one has its own quirks and styles. The part that gets interesting is how you string these abilities together to form combos and keep piling on damage. Knowing how and when to change up your attack combos is wildly satisfying, being aware of whether you are on Pheonix or Titan means the difference of using a warp strike to close distance or a block to parry an incoming blow. There is equipment that removes this strategy, that automatically dodges and uses skills freely, for those who struggle with action games, but the real fun comes in figuring it all out for yourself.
Fighting is meaty, you can stun enemies by piling on pressure to break their stance and open them up to greater damage. Blocking, parrying, and warping around the battlefield all add weight to your selection of abilities and your strategy. Do you get out of dodge with a warp to a distant foe as you become surrounded? Do you counterattack and take the risk of damage to keep pressing forward? Do you parry and smash your way through with Titan? Do you simply dodge and dodge and dodge until you’re clear of danger and hopefully your timing was good enough to go unscathed? However you play a game you can figure out a style that works for you.
Eikon battles are a real treat as well. As someone who used to select Ifrit off of a menu to watch a sprite of a fiery little guy scroll onto the screen and cause red flashes and fire sprites to dance around, I am way into the more savage and brutal representation of old “summons” duking it out. I remember vividly the thrill of the Garuda battle, where each blow, each slash, felt like an event. When Ifrit grabs Garuda’s talon to pull her down and beat the hell out of her I remember laughing out loud and in awe, and Garuda’s not even the best fight. I lost my mind fighting Bahamut!
On top of how satisfying combat is to perform is also looks incredible. FFXVI is a flashy, bright, explosive game that makes all the familiar spells and abilities look amazing. It is remarkably satisfying to blitz an enemy with a flurry of sword strokes while using Odin’s Arm of Darkness to build up to a Zantetsuken or to barrage the battlefield with a hail of laser beams with Bahamut. All the special effects that occur during a fight are pure eye candy, everything has been polished to the nines.
Beyond the combat the characters are excellent. It’s been a hot minute since Final Fantasy had a likeable cast of characters, I would have to go as far back as X if we’re not counting XIV due to being an MMO. Clive may be cold and broody but as you progress in your journey he warms up, as he helps people and deepens his relationships he changes and grows. The ways in which the plot develops Clive from a miserable loner to a man willing to fight to the ends of the earth to protect his friends and loved ones goes hand in hand with the plot being about resisting sadness and nihilism to embrace what makes life worth living, it’s immaculate.
The final showdown is, without giving the whole thing away, peak Seinen writing. Clive and Ultima duking it out not only physically but clashing their ideals, Clive’s hope, will, and love against Ultima’s fear, doubt, and despair. It’s all very anime, very Final Fantasy (this isn’t the first villain to want to “return things to zero” so to speak) and I’m there for it.
Giving FFXVI over to Yoshi-P was a brilliant move on Square Enix’s part, his management of FFXIV has been at the core of the Final Fantasy revival. The worlds and characters that he and his team create are without peer, he clearly had a bold vision for what he wanted XVI to be and he has the seasoning and experience to execute.
My one, main gripe with the game, however, is the side quests. They’re all fetch quests, they all take a bit too long and the amount of quests that require you to not only finish the objective and talk to the quest giver just to have to travel and talk to the quest giver a second time is way too many. A black spot on an otherwise impeccable offering.
All of this amounts to an excellent action game with a great story but what makes it a masterpiece? Why would I invoke such a loaded term? Well, the more interesting aspect of FFXVI is that its thesis is a meditation on Final Fantasy as a series. It demands of us that we consider the franchise and our relationship to it, it challenges fans openly and honestly to reflect.
Taking the major, unifying, iconography of Final Fantasy, the crystals, and turning them into a tool used by the villain in a plot to own the world is a bold stroke. From the first game the crystals have been empowering, they grant heroes their abilities, they allow heroes to become knights and dragoons, mages and beast masters. They are the tools used to defeat the bad guys, to smite Chaos, thwart Emperors, clear up Clouds of Darkness, to resist lunar malice, to battle beings from the interdimensional rift.
Sometimes they are more front and center to the plot than others, but more than Moogles and Chocobos, more than moody pretty boys, more than -aga spells, crystals are the most important image in the series. And here we are, destroying them.
We journey alongside Clive and his allies to undo the evil that the crystals have wrought upon Valisthea, we see how the people have come to rely upon them as tools for mundane tasks, we witness the evil that people visit upon those they enslave to work the crystals they rely upon. We see this icon of power and light turned into an evil tool, we fight against that fate with Clive to resist the doom promised by these blessings, we see that the past of the franchise has become a crutch that the series has leaned on for too long and that things are changing before our very eyes.
Final Fantasy is changing, it has always changed, always moved forwards. Sure, there’s a long string of RPGs that resemble one another closely, then there’s a string that that doesn’t, then there’s a couple of action games. But this is evolution, each block builds upon the next, but the blessing of the crystals can’t stymie the series forever. FFXVI offers a challenge, to uproot the crystals, to build footing on which new things can grow, to move beyond the past and embrace the future. The history will always be there, go back to it if you wish, but the revolution is now and the ground is shifting. Change is coming, but in the words of Cid, “that’s half the fun of it, life’s too short for perfect plans. You want a plan that’ll keep you on your toes – stop you from growing old and complacent.”
So, what will it be? Will you be a part of the revolution?
