It’s also hard to overstate the impact of the incredible art and sky-high production values, with scenes so magnificent or pretty that you have to stop sometimes just to take in the view. Yet the story is intriguing, Clive and his compadres are engaging, and there are some genuinely shocking and touching moments along the way. Not everything lands the way the game’s makers probably hoped, and they sometimes struggle to follow the big action set pieces with anything meaningful. Your faithful wolf, Torgal, could have come straight from Game of Thrones (Square Enix Co Ltd.) The rebels have regional accents, Clive gets his own super-sized wolf buddy, and there’s even the odd bash at the series’ ‘sexposition’. You can see this in the gritty medieval fantasy setting, the tendency to avoid clean-cut heroes and villains, and the brutal violence, cruel twists and shifts of point-of-view. The team behind the game have been very open about the influence of Game of Thrones. The scale of the tale, spanning decades, make’s Clive’s journey from lone-wolf warrior to freedom fighter all the more compelling. It then picks up his story some 13 years later, as he wrestles with the consequences. The game first follows Clive and his epic coiffure as he battles to protect his Dominant brother through tumultuous events in Rosaria. This magic can be wielded by the Dominants, nobles that contain within them all-powerful spirits known as Eikons, and able to use their godlike abilities and even transform into them to lead the troops in battle. The six realms of Valisthea have been built on Aether, a magical energy emitted by vast crystals the size of mountains. This time, it’s the story of Clive Rosfield, son of the current Grand Duke of Rosaria and brother of the next, not to mention the possessor of some seriously impressive boy-band hair. Big battles turn into barely interactive cinematics, where you perch on the edge of your seat, waiting for the next prompt to let you know which button to press. The fighting is too simple to be satisfying, with long sections that run practically on rails. In fact, you could argue that it’s less than that.Īnd for the first few hours, this looks like a big mistake. In many ways, it’s no more an RPG than God of War or the last few Assassin’s Creed games. However, all the party-based combat and complex progression systems of previous Final Fantasies have been ditched for something that plays more like a hack-and-slash action game, complete with combos, special attacks, and last-minute dodge moves and counter-attacks. Sure, it has the fixtures and fittings of a role-playing game. It hasn’t just switched characters or combat systems it’s effectively switched its genre. Yet even by those standards, Final Fantasy XVI is a radical departure. (Final Fantasy)įor a series that has been around since the late 80s, Final Fantasy has never been one for the same old, same old, with each new main instalment bringing in new worlds and heroes to reinvent whatever came before. Final Fantasy XVI is all about the swordplay with a side-order of sorcery.
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