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bluebudgie · 8 months

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Behold! The long announced whiny pissbaby gamer rage essay that noone on the internet asked for.

Disclaimer up front: This is about Eff Eff Sixteen. If you're a fan of this game I advise you to just ignore this because I genuinely don't want to piss into your morning coffee with my negativity. I will rip this game several new assholes. You have been warned.

FAQ Q: Don't you have anything better to spend your time on than writing a ridiculously lengthy internet text post about a video game whose existence you are free to simply ignore? A: Yes, but this matter is personal. I'm writing this for the sake of carthasis. Closure. To be free of the rage that has possessed me for the past months. Q: Have you tried touching grass? A: I have sat in a field of grass for a prolonged amount of time prior to writing this. I am beyond the need of touching grass. Q: Do you expect anyone to actually read all this? A: No.

Spoilers ahead, obviously. Let's go.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? 1.1 It's personal 1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

The battle system

The narrative 3.1 Storytelling and morality 3.2 Pacing 3.3 Visuals 3.4 Characters 3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake 3.4.2 The state of women 3.5 Music

Credit where credit is due 4.1 It's personal again

Conclusion

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1. Introduction: Is this the worst game ever made? What a strange way to start, you may think. Shouldn't this question rather be addressed in a conclusion at the end? I want to set the record straight from the start: No, it is not the worst game ever made. All things considered I don't even think it's the worst game of its series. And yet I have never in my life felt such unbridled hatred for a video game, or honestly, any piece of entertainment media I can currently think of. Why is that?

1.1 It's personal Usually I'm pretty good at doing the sensible thing people should do when they don't like something - ignore it. Why bother wasting your energy deliberately seeking out something that you know will make you angry?

Hear me out for a moment, I'll have to go on a tangent here.

I didn't actively get into the series until a year before FFXIII released - which at this point in time is 15 years ago now, but considering we've had only two more (singleplayer) mainline games since then, it's still a relatively late entry point. This is to say: I don't think I'm wearing the worst nostalgia goggles, but I do have a long history with the series nonetheless. These games have played a big role in my life for those past 15 years.

I used to roll my eyes at the "the series died after FFX" crowd. FFXII is one of the best in the series, sure FFXIII was a landslide miss for me, but... that's one game, right. Then FFXV's release drew closer. I did not like what I saw, for many reasons I won't detail now. What did I do? I blacklisted the game's name on all social media platforms, and didn't hear anything about it anymore. To this day I haven't actually seen much of it, though I do know the rough outline. And I know that while the game has a dedicated fanbase, it has also received its fair share of harsh criticism.

Why am I telling you all this?

1.2 Pre-release & producer statements

A few years ago, FFXVI was announced. And I have to be honest: I was negatively biased from the start. I hadn't been happy with SE's general direction for years and I wasn't particularly hopeful for this entry either. But - and I want to make this very clear - I was open to give this game a fair chance. The announcement trailer didn't really hook me but it looked alright, some visual and audio gripes aside. I was... cautiously curious. Not quite enough to call it optimistic, but I wanted to be hopeful.

You know what's excellent at crushing hopes? Game producer interviews that range from "that's a severely stupid opinion to have but you do you" aka (paraphrased) "our traditionally turn-based series can't be turn-based anymore because in order to get the production costs covered we have to appeal to the masses, and the masses are kids who love action and not outdated combat systems in which you have to navigate menus to act" (source); to downright offensive statements such as "we are creating a fantasy world based on reality and therefore black people can't exist in our european medieval setting" (source); and "I have gamer pride so I don't want to feature an easy difficulty setting in my game" (source - for clarity's sake there are accessibility options in the game in the form of equipment that helps simplify combat, however the statement itself is still really goddamn stupid).

And I know these statements have been called out by some - but it definitely didn't blow up as much as it should have considering the popularity of this franchise. It's an open secret why this is the case (if you're out of the loop: the game producer in question is an untouchable god with a really large cult fan following), and quite frankly I believe this is probably where the first seeds of my hatred were sown. Knowing that no matter what FFXVI was going to be it would have people defend it out of their blind commitment to the team behind the game's development, left a.... spiteful aftertaste in my mouth.

Ironically looking back now, and plain offensive statements aside, my biggest concern for the game itself was actually the combat system. I'm definitely part of the old-school "a main series FF game needs turn-based combat" crowd. Oh sweet summer child.

At this point I decided it would be better to go the FFXV route (which, by the way, had some similarly stupid dev comments at its release). All marketing made it clear that I was not the target audience for this game, so best to just ignore its existence.

That worked... alright...ish... until the demo's release. I guess you could say curiousity killed the cat. I decided to take a look at someone's playthrough... and that's where my initial "pissbaby gamer rage" draft that I ended up not posting came from. Go big or go home, if I wanted to be angry about this game in public I should at least be fair and wait for the full release. Not judge the game by its (admittedly generous in length) demo. Get the full receipts, see it for all that it is in its entirety. I think in a way I still didn't want to give up hope completely.

And that's where we are now, two months later I've watched a full playthrough of the game including all sidequests. It's been a wild ride to say the least.

2. The battle system

Let's get this out of the way before we finally get to the really meaty part: As mentioned earlier my primary concern before release was the combat system since it's so far removed from the older entries of the series. Ironically, of all things, this is probably the smallest issue I have with the game now.

I still don't think the combat is good, mind you - this is mostly a matter of personal taste but I'll never see how button mashing and a series of QTEs overlayed over 20 minutes of cinematic cutscene is supposed to be more impactful or fun than the oh-so-outdated turn based menu inputs. Then again, I didn't play the game myself and can therefore obviously not judge how good or bad it feels in the heat of battle. I say "button mashing", by the way, as what I've gathered from other people's reviews - who genuinely enjoyed the game - the combat is really watered down and repetitive in comparison to games with similar systems like the DMC series. While you do pick up new abilities over the course of the game it seems like once you've found one combination that works you can solve every single battle following those exact inputs. This is one of the two really big complaints about this game I've seen consistently in almost every review.

Speaking of combat, the game has the weirdest way to pull you out of the action and emotional moments by freezing mid cutscene, showing a "you won the battle - here's your loot" screen while blasting an epic choir rendition of the classic FF fanfare, before picking that same cutscene right back up. I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but it's honestly jarring. For an extremely cinematic game that supposedly wants to break with "outdated" traditions, implementing that very video game-y results screen is a strange choice.

You could say this last point is nitpicking, and if this game had no other issues I would probably not mention it at all, but as it is this little detail is indicative of a much, much larger issue.

3. The narrative

[The sound of cracking knuckles can be heard in the distance.] Let the slaughter begin.

Prior to release the game was marketed as a departure from the rest of the series - the setting was advertised as a darker, more mature, political intrigue for an adult audience. ('But the masses of kids that like action com-' Who? What are you talking about?) Because as we all know, no other FF game has ever been dark before (/sarcasm).

What we got was storytelling and character writing with about the maturity level of a twelve year old teenage boy in his edgelord phase making his first Game of Thrones fanfiction drafts. This game oozes of sexism, really stupid slavery allegories, the most dumbed down black and white morality with a matching set of one-dimensional black and white characters, godawful pacing and some of the worst NPC dialogues I've ever had to witness.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

3.1 Storytelling and morality

So this dark and mature political story... I'm still searching for it. I know GoT started this trend where writers will use "politics" as a buzz word to make their games look complex (FFXVI hasn't been the sole offender in the past years). Then they expose you to a few kingdom names, show you a map with territories, drop a few year dates with barely any significant relevance to anything over the course of the game, and pretend that's a deep political intrigue. I have news for you: It's not.

Alright, then... this dark and mature... oh. Oh you mean that's because there's a plethora of blood splatters and people say "fuck" and "cock" and "whore" and there's goofily censored sex on screen? Ah... oh. Alright, I see. If that's what you'd call that... sure.

But surely the people who are tattooed like cattle and used as slaves due to being born as magic users will have an interesting role in the story dealing with the very delicate topic of slaver- ...oh, uh... what do you mean the perfect king beloved by everyone is the good guy because unlike all the other people who held slaves, he treated his slaves nicely? And, before you ask.... No, this isn't some sort of commentary the game wants you to question. This guy is unironically, unambiguously portrayed as the perfect good guy. Brought up many, many times for how flawless he is.

And that... is where we're diving into one of this game's biggest and most glaring issues. The writing is so mindnumbingly black and white with not the slightest room for ambiguous or grey morality it's painful. Everything and everyone in this game is always either good with no failings - or so stupidly evil they may as well be a bad saturday morning cartoon villain.

Good characters are always good, and always act out of the pure kindness of their heart. When you think a good character fucked up and actually did something bad, it will later be revealed that either it wasn't them at all and it was all a scheme, or they were possessed by the big baddie and therefore not actually responsible for their actions. Can't possibly risk anyone appearing like a realistic person with character depth now, can we?

And don't worry, just in case you have an extremely bad case of media illiteracy with the slightest hint of doubt of anyone's alignment on the binary moral chart, the game will make sure to overexplain literally every tiny detail to you in the worst way possible. You see, the evil woman right at the start? The one who looks really evil and moves really evil and the first thing she does is being mean to the slaves and being dismissive of her own son? In case you didn't get yet that she's evil, there will be guards whispering about how evil she is when she leaves the scene. Also a scene later the good perfect king will point out how evil she is. And worry not, in case you forget in the few hours she's not on screen, characters will make sure to remind you how she has not a single redeeming quality and every breath she has ever taken has been filled with evil.

And this might sound like I'm exaggerating. But the game is like this with Every. Single. Thing. Sometimes I found myself genuinely wondering if the writers were actively trying to insult the player's intelligence with this condescending amount of overexplanation. Characters constantly comment on everything that is visibly happening on screen - for God's sake if you want to make a modern game that moves away from "outdated" mechanics then write it this way. If you show what is going on with detailed realistic graphics, you do not need characters monologuing a description of what they're seeing. You do not need to voice a character saying "I'm sad" when you can clearly see their facial expression. You do not need to make a character loudly ask himself with noone else present by his side "Is he hallucinating?" when showing another character's hallucinations. Old games did that because they had limited visual capabilities. If you sit on your high horse talking about moving the series forward while spitting into your old playerbase's faces, then do it right at the very least.

Once in a while you'll be exposed to some textbook philosophy theories, which in essence wouldn't be a bad idea at all if those philosophies were somehow smartly woven into the game's narrative… but instead you get characters quoting essentially the wikipedia summary of what that philosophy is about and call it a day.

I wish this was the only issue with the game's writing.

3.2 Pacing

This game's pacing is atrocious. Genuinely, utterly awful. And there`s mostly one thing to blame: Sidequests. If you've heard a single criticism for this game even from people who highly praise it, it's this.

The sidequests are absolutely horrendous filler content on so many levels. Gameplay wise they're usually "follow 10 meters of a linear corridor to defeat an enemy and then grab a carrot at the end" fetch quests. Visually they are not just a nose dive but an entire plane crash compared to the well animated main quests, consisting mostly of the same three reused conversation animations from FFXIV (I'm all for reusing assets if it helps developers save time, work smarter not harder, but this one is blatantly obvious in all the worst ways). And the writing.... oh boy.

NPCs go on and on and on and on having the most blandly written expository dialogue. I get that the writer's intention was to give the world a bit of context and make it feel more alive with random people telling you about their life stories and everyday hurdles, but they failed miserably at making this remotely engaging. They may as well have had people read the dictionary. And maybe this would have worked better as purely written textbox dialogue (if about half of the dialogue was cut, which would still leave more than enough padding around the actually relevant information) - but in a game with voice acting, making people audibly speak in ways noone would ever speak to another person, just doesn't work. It's stilted and unnatural, and really awkward to listen to.

Delivery aside, the stories told in these sidequests vary from "farmer's everyday life issues about growing their crops" to "random child ends oppression by convincing an angry mob of adults they shouldn't be stoning someone because that someone has been a valuable asset to their society (by reminding them they need to keep the streets clean) and suddenly every adult in range is free of bigoted feelings". And then everyone in the bus clapped, I guess. And again, I get the intention behind these stories but they're so clumsily written.

And yes, these are sidequests - you are free to ignore them. But they do make up a considerable chunk of the game. And, unfortuantely, a fair handful of the main quests follow this same fetch quest formula.

This game goes long, very long stretches without anything substential happening. And it's good to have downtime to breathe - the game's big main story moments pack a punch in terms of epic adrenaline filled battles. But this game honestly feels like 60 hours of filler fetch quests with the occasional relevant story sequence sprinkled in between.

3.3 Visuals

I'm not a film student so maybe it's not my place to comment on cinematography, but I felt like visually many of the cutscenes were also really... bland. Not necessarily bad looking (if you can see anything behind the millions of particle effects) but it definitely felt like less care was put into choosing narratively interesting image composition compared to a game like FFXII.

And then it also does this really annoying thing where it will constantly fade to black for absolutely no reason.

Character A: Oh that seems like an exciting story! Tell me all about it. Character B: Okay, so this is a long story... [screen fades to black] [screen fades from black to the exact same shot we had before the fade] Character B: So the story goes like this... (starts telling the story you thought was told off screen indicated by the black sreen)

This and similar instances happen fairly often and I just don't get why. It's nothing to hate the game for but it's just... really strange. Just like those really silly "In the meantime..." text overlays for scenes that are very clearly happening in the meantime. Seriously, we get it. You don't have to spell it out. But whatever, this is one of those things I'd look past if it weren't for the whole rest of this trainwreck.

3.4 Characters

Speaking of trainwrecks. [Takes a deep breath] I've avoided this topic for long enough now. This is where the last seams that hold the game together break and make it fall apart entirely. This is where the pile of shit that's been tossed across the room finally hits the fan.

If you're remotely familiar with any Final Fantasy title you know how important a solid cast is to those games. Your allies and party members you meet over the course of the game, their stories and views on the world's happenings... a charismatic villain. Well, how about we just simply didn't have any of that.

3.4.1 The game's biggest mistake

FFXVI's writers made the decision to focus the game's narrative around a single character, our playable protagonist. There is a small supporting cast of characters that you meet, and occasionally travels alongside you temporarily, but most of them have... not much to them. The game makes it clear: This story is about Clive, and him alone.

And... I don't think having a story focused on a single character is necessarily a bad decision per se, even if highly unusual for a series that was driven by party systems for decades, but... If you decide to do that, then your protagonist needs to have more personality than a soggy wet sponge. It's bad enough that pretty much noone in this game has any sort of depth to them, but if you sideline literally every character in favour of your protagonist's narrative then... at least give that protagonist a character?

This man's personality is nothing beyond helping people because it's the right thing to do. The attempted "he feels guilty for killing his brother" (which naturally he didn't actually do, because that would be too complex of a story) subplot gets dropped a few hours in and he's just... that guy who runs everyone's errands with no input of his own. And it doesn't make him unlikeable necessarily, it just makes him terribly boring.

What is really, really grating however is how every other character portrays him. Named characters and unnamed NPCs alike will throw pity parties for him over and over, going on about how he's so self-sacrificial, always doing everything for others while never expecting anything in return and never taking enough care of himself. It's exhausting. We get it. He's the perfect heroic nice guy, just like his (slave having) dad, the unfailable king. And unlike his evil witch of a mother. Who is so evil, by the way. At times I felt like Clive was some sort of dream fantasy guy self insert of the writers.

I'll say it plainly now: the lack of a well developped playable party is, in my opinion, the game's downfall. Clive alone can't carry the narrative because there isn't nearly enough depth to him, and everyone else has deliberately been stripped of any sort of meaningful screentime. Narrative aside I also feel like multiple playable characters would have done a lot for more variety in terms of gameplay. And before you raise your pitchforks - yes, there are few, very few characters that have their own little story moment. But boy... at what cost.

3.4.2 The state of women

! Rape & suicide mention trigger warning for this section !

So you know, Clive's sidekick? No, not the dog, the girl. Jill. The one who spends most of the game sick in bed, kidnapped, or otherwise missing, and whose single personality trait is being Clive's pure and innocent love interest. Surprisingly, she has her own 30 minutes of side story! A side story that essentially boils down to finding out she was held captive by a weird cult that had no relevance prior to this point and will have no relevance at all after this point. You get to beat up the cult's leader who is revealed to sexually assault underage girls.

Is that ever addressed again at any point? No.

But worry not. We still have a few more women in the bigger roles of the game. One of them, Benedikta, is an early game antagonist whose entire thing is seducing men, and most of the screentime she has is sex scenes. Once you defeat her in battle she flees, and a randomly passing by group of bandits is implied to attempt to rape her. This triggers a flashback of a past assault she was rescued from, and she goes mad. You fight her again, now in her powered up form, and kill her. Then she gets decapitated and her head is sent in a box to her lover to fuel his man rage. Don't worry, you'll get more sex scene flashbacks with her after her death.

But hey. We have another woman in a leading role. The supposedly main antagonist before the real big baddie (who is so boring of a villain i can't even get myself to say anything more about him) is revealed to have business with her. Clive's evil slave-mistreating mum. Her purpose in the story is breeding a flawless heir. What fuels this dignified ambition? Hell if I know. She's written in a hateable way for the sake of it. Likely to contrast Clive and his flawless dad. Absolutely zero depth to anything.

Guess her age here.

If you guessed "at least in her 50s" you are correct! Do I even have to say anything more about this.

The moment her perfect heir is killed, she loses it and slits her own throat. A very anticlimatic conclusion to her non-existent character arc.

Yes, there are a couple more secondary female characters who aren't necessarily walking misogyny targets, but they're pretty much irrelevant to the plot.

Here's a quote from my girlfriend, who is a woman, about the state of women in this game: "I have scarcely felt this alienated by the depiction of women in a video game."

! Trigger warning ends here !

So, uh... how do we move on from here... Let's head somewhere less offensive.

3.5 Music

Usually I'd give the soundtrack a lot more attention since I'm of the opinion that music is one of the most vital parts in a game and can absolutely make or break it - but quite frankly I don't have much to say about this one in detail. It's largely generic epic orchestra music with nothing much unique going for it. The regular battle theme is fairly memorable; and then there's that really aggravatingly annoying acoustic guitar ambient song that seems to play for about half of the game's time. Seriously I hate that one. It drove me nuts. In general I don't know if there's more than 10 songs in the OST because I don't think I heard more than that. Either that, or they all sounded the same.

What stuck out negatively to me especially (apart from that godsdamned acoustic guitar) was the overusage of over the top orchestral arrangements for the tiniest occasions, which was unfitting at best and really tiring at worst. I got used to it with time, but still a good soundtrack isn't just making every moment sound like it's as epic as the final boss, it's making varied music that fits the moment and sets the ambience.

Also not to ruin the OST for anyone who actually enjoys it, but the game's leitmotif sounds like Army of Lovers' Crucified. Noticed it during the demo and couldn't unhear it for the entirety of the game. You're welcome.

4. Credit where credit is due

As should be evident by now, I'm not finding much redeemable in this game. And yet - I would be lying if I said I didn't find myself liking some aspects of it.

Some of the armour designs are pretty neat. In general the character design as a whole feels coherent and mostly fits the setting, some questionable haircut choices aside.

There are chocobos. In different colours. They look nice. Not a big surprise, I suppose.

The voice acting is really good. I can't comment much on the English dub since I only watched the demo in English and then watched the full game with a streamer who played in German; but the German voice actors did an amazing job, and I've heard only good things about the English cast as well. Listening to a few comparisons I was surprised how deep English Joshua's voice is. He sounds like a teenage boy even after the last timeskip in German. That took me out a bit. I also realized I'm very partial to Dion's German voice acting. His final scene was extremely strong in that regard.

Speaking of Dion....

4.1 It's personal again

Alright. Listen. I hate this. I fucking hate this. For weeks I suffered through this game, nothing but this burning passionate hatred within me, ready to shred and tear every single aspect of it apart.

And then. So close to the end. In the final stretch. When I've almost made it through with nothing but rage and hatred by my side. This fucking stupid garbage game attacks my one goddamn weak point: The gay prince and his lover share a small "it isn't meant to be" moment. And I genuinely enjoyed the little gestures in that cutscene. It was a good cutscene.

And at this point I was unfortunately confronted with a hard to swallow pill: I had been kinda looking forward to every time Dion showed up on screen. I'll be honest I'm not sure I would have made it through the game without the driving force of "hey maybe he'll show up again". Over time he turned into my single point of fixation, and it's sad because ultimately he too is pretty much a wet sponge of a character, though maybe the least wet and spongy one. I think he does have some of the stronger scenes in the game (as well as the most visually appealing boss battle - whatever was going on with that bullet hell laser fight in space). He's also unfortunately a sad blond Final Fantasy prince and. Uh. Yeah. Ahem. Alas, he's kinda ugly. Subjectively. But he has an absolutely mighty hip swing when he walks. And a pretty cool spear. Good weapon choice.

In general, props to SE for including an unambiguously gay character in a decently written way. We all know this company is pretty behind in terms of diversity and representation, so seeing that was a pleasant surprise.

Anyway I really REALLY hate to admit it but I've been kinda held hostage by the game over this stupid prince. I'm hoping this is a temporary side effect (derogatory) from being exposed to the game for a prolonged amount of time and in a few weeks I won't care anymore. I hate it here.

5. Conclusion

When I finally finished watching the game after having spent 2 entire months with it I was mostly asking myself one question... What is worse in regards to an art medium? To hate it so intensely that you're willing to dive into every little aspect of it; or to feel complete indifference?

I can't tell you if I think FFXVI is the worst game in the series. It's the one I feel the most passionate hate for, that's for sure. But a game like FFXV seems so inherently unappealing I don't even care to look at it. Not because I think I'll dislike it any more, I just think it will bore me. (Irrelevant side note - I do plan to finally watch a playthrough of that one too in the future. Might as well commit now.)

There are aspects of FFXVI I do think are inexcusable in an objective way; delicate topics handled badly, developers that need an attitude check, and also... by god go meet a woman in real life, please.

For a game that was said to modernize and move the series forward, it makes terribly outdated choices in many regards. It somehow tries so hard to be a departure from the other games in the series, losing a lot of what makes a good Final Fantasy game, and simultaneously clings so hard to references that feel so empty when the core of these games has been trampled on. No amount of preludes and FF1 overworld theme rearrangements and corny "this will be your final fantasy" puns can bring the series' essence back that this game failed to capture. A sense of adventure, a compelling story with a meaningful cast of companions, a world to explore beyond grey corridors.

It should have been a spin-off, not a main title game. Obviously a different name wouldn't have changed the quality of the game, but I can't shake off the feeling that had it been called FFXIV: The Offline Singleplayer Experience (which quite frankly it feels like in many regards), I might have been a bit more lenient with my judgement.

Still...public reception of the game seems, surprisingly, fairly mixed. My fears of the game being hailed as the second coming of Christ didn't actually become true. At the very least the gameplay is oftentimes heavily criticized. And while I really have to wonder if all the people who praise the story and character writing have watched the same thing as I have, seeing the game actually receive some nuanced opinions from both people who like and dislike it alike is a refreshing twist I didn't expect. (Just in case this comes across wrong: I don't consider my opinions to be nuanced. I'm just a hater. But I'm right. Ha.)

Well... uh... After all this I don't quite know how to end this. I feel like I've said more than anyone should say about this game and somehow nothing of substance at all. Topical, I suppose. Oh well. Congrats (I guess) to this game for sparking something in me (negative) no other game has ever done before. For all it's worth, it strengthened my bond to some of the older entries I used to judge more harshly. I know better now.

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If you're the single person who made it this far, I think you deserve to have some pictures. Here's my favourite battle phase: (Something about those symmetrical orb patterns was very aesthetically pleasing. Better in motion though.)

And here's an exclusive look at parts of my initial draft and some discord liveblogging:

anyway peace out ✌️ go watch dions death scene in german

#this is my villain origin story #and also the unskippable cutscene villain monologue i'll drop 3/4th through the story

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