Final Fantasy XVI

[Falksi]

Square Enix Loses Close to $2bn in Market Value Since Final Fantasy XVI’s Release​

For a smaller title, 3-4 million units sold would be a successful market run, but for a multimillion dollar, multi year development undertaking such as Final Fantasy XVI, such numbers are not what SE would have hoped, and thus here we are.

https://neverendingrealm.com/news/s...XXw5oB9Ueuv5tp_AXI6zHZv51SvAR6DJgKdFpr1TMqMSE

Oh yeah. It's all due to FFXVI of course.
And not Forspoken, Avengers and plenty of other extreme money-wasting flops.

Yeah, I think anyone with any sense realizes it's down to Square as a company making bad decisions on the whole. But FF16 is definitely part of that equation.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Should’ve never let Crystal Dynamics make that Avengers game.

 

[kyosuke]

Square Enix Loses Close to $2bn in Market Value Since Final Fantasy XVI’s Release​

For a smaller title, 3-4 million units sold would be a successful market run, but for a multimillion dollar, multi year development undertaking such as Final Fantasy XVI, such numbers are not what SE would have hoped, and thus here we are.

https://neverendingrealm.com/news/s...XXw5oB9Ueuv5tp_AXI6zHZv51SvAR6DJgKdFpr1TMqMSE

Oh yeah. It's all due to FFXVI of course.
And not Forspoken, Avengers and plenty of other extreme money-wasting flops.

Yeah, I think anyone with any sense realizes it's down to Square as a company making bad decisions on the whole. But FF16 is definitely part of that equation.

Yeah and my problem is the title only name and shames FFXVI like it's the biggest contributor when it's let down by the stupid decision to platform limit it to PS5 for 6 months so they can't sell as much as they could've.

 

[scytheavatar]

Square Enix Loses Close to $2bn in Market Value Since Final Fantasy XVI’s Release​

For a smaller title, 3-4 million units sold would be a successful market run, but for a multimillion dollar, multi year development undertaking such as Final Fantasy XVI, such numbers are not what SE would have hoped, and thus here we are.

https://neverendingrealm.com/news/s...XXw5oB9Ueuv5tp_AXI6zHZv51SvAR6DJgKdFpr1TMqMSE

Oh yeah. It's all due to FFXVI of course.
And not Forspoken, Avengers and plenty of other extreme money-wasting flops.

Yeah, I think anyone with any sense realizes it's down to Square as a company making bad decisions on the whole. But FF16 is definitely part of that equation.

Yeah and my problem is the title only name and shames FFXVI like it's the biggest contributor when it's let down by the stupid decision to platform limit it to PS5 for 6 months so they can't sell as much as they could've.

Forspoken, Avengers and other extreme money-wasting flops would be a whatever if FFXVI was highly successful and on the way to selling 10 million copies. Cause it would signal that there's a path for the FF brand to be revived and become the biggest gaming IP again. Problem is that if not even the great hero named Yoshi-P can save Final Fantasy as an non-MMO IP then it brings about the question as to who the fuck can. And if FF becomes worthless then the future is not very bright for Square Enix.

 

[turkishronin]

Toriyama can save final fantasy

 

[Falksi]

Toriyama can save final fantasy

 

[Prince(ss)]

I need it to flop even harder so they never make another westaboo GoT-esque "Final Fantasy" ever again.

 

[Cross]

I need it to flop even harder so they never make another westaboo GoT-esque "Final Fantasy" ever again.

You'll regret saying that when Square Enix looks at the massive success of Baldur's Gate 3 and copies its degeneracy instead for the next Final Fantasy game.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

This game is baffling.

All you had to do was use a variant on FF7R's action ATB system and make the Dominants party members. Add some real customization and gear and you're set. Nice high-production value JRPG.

Instead we get Devil May Clive w/ Witcher storytelling or something. I was interested at first when the game world opened up but there's nothing really there. The leveling system is mostly perfunctory, Eikon upgrades are tied to the story. None of them was a real upgrade until Bahamut, which is the fifth one you get. Weapons are on a linear track as well, finding a new one hardly matters. FF15 had umpteen different weapon types with multiple combos, this has one weapon type with 2 combos. The least they could do was give you a new weapon type with each Eikon. They don't even change Clive's core moveset.

What the game has to keep you going is sidequests. Tons and tons of sidequests. Someone must have looked at other games and decided side quests were the main draw of the game. But the sidequests have almost no way to reward you for anything. Exp that doesn't matter, useless crafting mats, some ability points that I forget to even spend. When people say they like sidequests in RPGs, I believe they are saying they enjoy player-driven activities that are brief and rewarding, allowing you to expand beyond the progression curve of the game. None of that happens here.

What you get from sidequests is story. So much story. I can't believe how much dialogue they recorded for these. I had a simple mission to kill some bandits, one fight and it's over. But it had 6 individual fully voiced animated dialogue cutscenes that are 3-5 minutes each. I can't imagine how long this game would be if you listened to all this blather. It's so pointless. I NEVER skip dialogue or cutscenes in a first time run of a game, yet here we are.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

How many of the 80s-90s main Japanese iconic game companies are now floundering dying, dead, or reanimated corpses of what they used to be?

 

[cvv]

snip

I suspected all that.

How do you explain the glowing reviews from known gameplay-oriented tubers/streamers btw? Is it because the spectacle and narrative is so dazzling it blinds you to the fact gameplay is actually shit? Kindda like in Witcher 3?

 

[Abu Antar]

Namco, Capcom, SEGA, and Nihon Falcom seem to be doing fine.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

how do you explain the glowing reviews from known gameplay-oriented tubers/streamers btw?

I don't know about streamers but I have seen a fair amount of critical youtube videos. The game does make a decent first impression, I always appreciate it when a story takes the trouble to show a character's normal happy life before tragedy strikes and they are thrown into chaos. Always works to sell the hero. With the combat you just kind of assume there's going to be more to it but there never is. The first power set you unlock is a dodge-counter, the second is some DoT spell, the third is a block. Like, neat, you've played for 20 hours, you get a block button. Wowzers.

I can't think of a single gameplay element this game does particularly well or stands out in any way, save the Eikon fights. God of War had the very fun Leviathan axe combat, spider man is spider man, Horizon had fun robot hunting, etc. This game is a total button masher. The enemies are HP sponges that all feel like they last twice as long as they should.

The Eikon fights remain cool but they're all pre-scripted in terms of power levels. You can't grind up your Eikon form or unlock any new powers. They require more than just QTE-prompts but not that much more. So none of your effort to level up Clive or complete side quests really matters. It's like Xenogears but there's only 8 mech battles and you can't change your loadout for any of them. Lame.

The game seems to fall into the trap of thinking worldbuilding = story. I can't be bothered to care about the characters in the game so their side stories and yammering are unbearable. This style of writing permeates all fiction currently though so maybe I'm just out of touch and this is what the zoomers love.

 

[Spike]

This looks fun, fellas. :\

 

[Jinn]

I think from what I've heard and seen, I'd still enjoy it if they upped the difficulty and made normal combat less mindless.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

All you had to do was use a variant on FF7R's action ATB system

What the...

God of War had the very fun Leviathan axe combat, spider man is spider man, Horizon had fun robot hunting, etc.

Oh
Figures

How do you explain the glowing reviews from known gameplay-oriented tubers/streamers btw?

Maybe because the combat is mechanically solid

 

[DJOGamer PT]

It's a shame that Duraframe300 decided to leave this website back in early summer
I was looking foward to read his full thoughts on the game, as despite being a bit of a storyfag he had very good judgement on jRPG's

 

[Damned Registrations]

What I find hilarious is that while the mainline series has been flop after flop since 12, and every remake of the older titles has been a cashcow, whether it's a shitty low effort mobile port or the more recent pixel remasters, they can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that there is a huge fucking market for turn based gameplay still. Hell, Pokemon and Dragon Quest are still doing just fine despite having monster designs and writing seemingly pulled from a drunken 4 year old. Just fire the upper third or so of your developmet hierarchy, pull in some indie developers making shit in fucking Gamemaker or whatever and do what they tell you instead of trying to create 3 new genres at once with every fucking release.

 

[cruel]

Outside of shitty side-quests and difficulty being too low, this is still a good game after all - combat is excellent, characters are written well, very good music, decent non-cringe writing, good story, the game was not afraid to let people die etc. I think the impressions may be much better if (and this is a big if) they add proper difficulty options on PC version. But yeah, definitely there is 'something' missing between going from one combat encounter to another.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

The only 4-hit magic burst combo + cooldown spam is stretched pretty thin over 40+ hours, and then your reward is 15 pieces of wyrite that you will never use and 7 Gil.

Heck, could used some diablo loot. Stranger of Paradise was better than this.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

What I find hilarious is that while the mainline series has been flop after flop since 12, and every remake of the older titles has been a cashcow, whether it's a shitty low effort mobile port or the more recent pixel remasters, they can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that there is a huge fucking market for turn based gameplay still. Hell, Pokemon and Dragon Quest are still doing just fine despite having monster designs and writing seemingly pulled from a drunken 4 year old. Just fire the upper third or so of your developmet hierarchy, pull in some indie developers making shit in fucking Gamemaker or whatever and do what they tell you instead of trying to create 3 new genres at once with every fucking release.

They haven’t really had a flop until recently. Final Fantasy 13 sold well, and outsold Final Fantasy 12. FF13 sales is partly what makes western developers and publishers whole idea that audiences wouldn’t go in for turn based games back during the 360 era so odd, because FF13 outsold all the BioWare, inXile, and Obsidian stuff...only New Vegas’ established 11.6 million sales after five years are comparable, and FF13 was able to hit 11 million a year earlier. Final Fantasy 15 sold well too; sold better than 7 Remake and 16 on release, and hit 10 million after five years.

I wouldn’t really be surprised if the next main Final Fantasy is a return to turn based gameplay. The most high profile games in the series having action combat I think is just kind of an odd situation they’ve fallen into through poor mismanagement of the series. Final Fantasy 16 is basically the first mainline Final Fantasy game they’ve made since Final Fantasy 13 came out. Which is fucking crazy when you think about it, since it first came out in Japan back in December of ‘09. There is 15, but 15 is just a FF13 action game spinoff that got rebranded. And 7 Remake is a spinoff too. At the least, if not the next mainline game being turn-based, I’d expect some spinoff to basically be classic Final Fantasy. Or who knows, maybe they do Dungeon Encounters 2 with like a Persona budget (which would still be a low budget game) and have 3D (or 2D) character models that do stuff during combat.

 

[Grauken]

But FF16 is definitely part of that equation.

It looks so dour and just not like a FF game should look like

 

[Falksi]

What I find hilarious is that while the mainline series has been flop after flop since 12, and every remake of the older titles has been a cashcow, whether it's a shitty low effort mobile port or the more recent pixel remasters, they can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that there is a huge fucking market for turn based gameplay still. Hell, Pokemon and Dragon Quest are still doing just fine despite having monster designs and writing seemingly pulled from a drunken 4 year old. Just fire the upper third or so of your developmet hierarchy, pull in some indie developers making shit in fucking Gamemaker or whatever and do what they tell you instead of trying to create 3 new genres at once with every fucking release.

Persona 6 is going to be a big kick in the cunt to them.

That series is very much starting to replace FF as the turn-based JRPG fans go-to, and I think the sales numbers from the next Persona entry will reflect that.

I dare say Reloaded will sell decent too (it might even match FF16 considering it's multi-platform), but that's not gonna snag & excite like a new entry.

 

[Falksi]

But FF16 is definitely part of that equation.

It looks so dour and just not like a FF game should look like

This is my biggest issue with it actually. Piss-easy combat, dull dialogue, mind-numbing side-quests etc...all valid criticisms, but the dour, low-fantasy world takes away the main appeal of most FF games since FF7.

Places like Zanarkand, The Moonflow, Midgar, Balamb Garden, The Deep Sea Research centee etc. will live long in the memory. I think FF is a vastly overrated franchise in general, which loses out to other franchises because of it's recycled Star Wars/Evil Empire/Crystals/Espers format, and it's lack of genuine sequels until FF10. But I enjoyed playing a lot of it's entries for it's outlandish worlds and areas. The sense of discovery in FF6, the industrial gloom of FF7, the edgy fantasy-punkness of FF8 etc....it was creative and exciting, even when the core game was wank (like FF8).

But FF16 not only turns it's back on what made it mechanically good, but also artistically great too.

Honestly, it's so far down the rankings of RPGs for me now that it wouldn't even get in my top 10 JRPG franchises.

 

[scytheavatar]

What I find hilarious is that while the mainline series has been flop after flop since 12, and every remake of the older titles has been a cashcow, whether it's a shitty low effort mobile port or the more recent pixel remasters, they can't seem to get it through their thick skulls that there is a huge fucking market for turn based gameplay still. Hell, Pokemon and Dragon Quest are still doing just fine despite having monster designs and writing seemingly pulled from a drunken 4 year old. Just fire the upper third or so of your developmet hierarchy, pull in some indie developers making shit in fucking Gamemaker or whatever and do what they tell you instead of trying to create 3 new genres at once with every fucking release.

Persona 6 is going to be a big kick in the cunt to them.

That series is very much starting to replace FF as the turn-based JRPG fans go-to, and I think the sales numbers from the next Persona entry will reflect that.

I dare say Reloaded will sell decent too (it might even match FF16 considering it's multi-platform), but that's not gonna snag & excite like a new entry.

The biggest test will be Metaphor: ReFantazio cause there's always a ceiling as to how much a weeaboo dating sim like the Persona games can sell, but a weeaboo dating Sim set in a fantasy world suddenly can appeal to a much larger audience. And can render the Final Fantasy games as irrelevant and pointless.