After referencing the Final Fantasy series in my last… “thought transcript” segment centered around “The Legend of Zelda – Tears of the Kingdom”, it’s only fair that my next “thought” reflects on what I thought about coming into, playing and having finished Final Fantasy 16.

First of all, I would like to summarize my expectations coming into the game, before I even uttered a single step into the world of Vanadiel or the life of Clive Rosefield with just a few sentences:

I know this will be a great game, and that I will like it a lot, but it almost certainly won’t be a Final Fantasy game. If Square is so inclined to change, they should have retired the main series and made this a new spinoff title named something like… I don’t know… Final Fantasy Next for instance. That would have been perfect because as a Final Fantasy fan, I would have been interested, but as a loyal long-term fan, I wouldn’t have been insulted by them stepping over tradition. In that scenario, this would have been a perfect experience.

That’s what I thought before stepping into this. At this point seeing only the trailers, interviews with the creators, and reading about the experiences of people who were invited to play a preview of the game.

Stepping into the story, and after spending a couple of hours in it, I can confirm the first part of my statement:

I like this game very much!

That being said, let’s dive a little deeper concerning my issue with the treatment of its legacy. Keeping it short… despite straying so far from the origin, it feels like a Final Fantasy game. It’s that simple. It does certain things good enough that it justifies its name. So I have no more concerns. Now let’s get into the game itself.

Starting the training battle was a moment that immediately sent me back to my childhood. Maybe I was simply deceived by the way the game wealds its music so perfectly, that I could have honestly been playing a football game like Fifa and have Final Fantasy playing on my mind. Just as the battle started so did that little tune, so reminiscent of Final Fantasy 8, yet in no way feeling like crudely thrown in fan service. The music is woven into the structure of this world at what feels like “a code” level. Maybe it was the music… but I don’t think so.

Exploring further, I think it was the least likely thing I would expect it to be:
the fight itself.

The battle system of Final Fantasy 16 was the last stand of the traditional Final Fantasy formula. Over the years Square has mutilated what it means to be that game more with every new entry. One of the elements that was at its core, what symbolized and popularized the series, what made it Final Fantasy, was its turn-based battle system. And all the stories defending the change to real-time action, with people arguing how it was initially turn-based only as a solution to the limitations of the time, were, and still are wrong!

That traditional system takes us -the players- into the mental state of a seasoned warrior. Where time stops and every part of every second counts. That in my view, is the meaning of those classic systems.

And that exact thought is what made me go back to my childhood. The times when I was thinking about that fact, how every move in a fight that I spent 10 minutes choosing, was happening in less than a second. How the entirety of the battle against some ultimate bass that took me about an hour or two to beat, lasted only around a minute or two in the game world.

And the thing is that the battles in Final Fantasy 16 look exactly like I imagined those scenes taking place, all that time ago.

That was the moment when I started to like it not just as a good game, but as a good Final Fantasy title.

Yes I agree, it’s a very cut-scene-heavy game, which in today’s “give me all of the control” world is absolutely not for everyone, but it certainly is for me. Also very much oriented around old-school fetch quests that practically scream “This is just a game!” as you scramble around the map making deliveries or clearing countless enemies, the game seems to make itself vulnerable on purpose. On that same note, we also need to address the map: in a time when it’s standard and shouldn’t have to be mentioned separately, the game still lacks a mini-map! “How can they be so careless to overlook such a thing” someone might ask. But again, it wouldn’t be me.

All of the points mentioned above may sound like critiques of game mechanics, but are in fact the reasons why I continued to be fascinated by this title.

I do agree that in an age where we strive to make the player part of every segment, the long and constant cutscenes may be overwhelming. When the aim is to lift the experience to someday become something truly immersive, this does appear to be a bad decision.

But it seems clear to me it was their choice to make it just the way it is, and that being said, I would forgive them even if it wasn’t the right one. I’m always in favor of someone sticking to their vision even if it might be safer to choose a different route. But they took that challenge head-on, with the result being the fantastic active time lore system! Implemented to counter the cutscene problem, it just works! The active time lore breaks up the action and shifts up the dynamic. It keeps the mind from going into autopilot. And it does it all at your peace.

Every side quest may follow the same formula, but the team compensated for this by giving us unique story moments and memorable characters we wouldn’t have lived through or met otherwise. We encounter them through our actions and not as a mandatory fate of the main story.

The mini-map may not be here, but the environment is so lush that in its absence, I find myself often lost in it. Looking to what is around the next tree, rather than staring down the mini-map and its borders, just walking around game assets. If it was meant to be an open-world game, then sure, it would be a mistake to emit something so basic, but it wasn’t. This way, it used our imagination to make a limited space seem bigger.

My intention here is just to illustrate the vision of how I see them countering these “old school” ideas, not to prove how they managed to do so. I am not sure that they did, not really. I’m probably just someone who loves the nostalgia of that time, so of course, this path of action would be effective on someone like me. But what I am sure of in seeing these extra touches is that they are made with intention.

It wasn’t a mistake or a lack of resources and time, it was their decision. And in those decisions, I see a lot of love.

It is why I continued to enjoy the game and embrace the love contained in it. It’s also the reason why I was able to follow the story so passionately and love every character in a way only possible by living it with them.

In today’s world, it’s very easy to throw money at something and make it look, sound, and even “be” good. But there is often something lacking that makes me not care. As corny as it sounds, I think it’s that element of love poured into a project that makes a difference.

So there you have it… my impression of Final Fantasy 16.

With this, I retract my first thoughts. This team rightly deserved a chance to make a mainline title, and they haven’t let me down. This isn’t a spin-off, it truly is a Final Fantasy game.

But don’t mistake these words as an apology for using SqureEnix as an example of “what not to be in the game industry”, they are still my very first example of that practice as seen through the eyes of an old fan. From the perspective of a consumer, on the other hand, I think they are doing just fine. No, these words aren’t for Square, just for the good people of Creative Business Unit III. You have my praise.