Final Fantasy XVI, however, seems to be the game that Square Enix and Sony needed it
to be. It is a high-quality product that shows off the power of the
PlayStation 5’s graphical muscles with thrilling gameplay. Square Enix has been happy
to report three million sales in the first week of release. Even the online discourse
around the game has been mixed but leaning to positive, maybe overly positive. If you come at
this game with a critical lens towards its clumsy handling of slavery, you’ll find a
caustic audience shouting you down. Gita Jackson’s nuanced review at Polygon was met with the online equivalent of boos and tomatoes. (Gaming discourse
is not at a high ebb in 2023, needless to say.) So, for better or worse, let’s count
Final Fantasy XVI as a "W" in Square Enix’s favor.
As for ol’ BlueHighwind here, Final Fantasy XVI is simply not good enough to "shut my brain off" about. At no point does the game ask that of you. This title is is desperate to prove its seriousness, copying Game of Thrones' style at its most grim and cheerless. Final Fantasy XVI wanted to combine themes of environmental disaster with class warfare in complex dance of polities fighting for resources. The bitter fact is that none of that lands. I cannot pretend the game is not trying for something bigger than usual anime tropes of teenager friendships destroying God. Of course, Final Fantasy XVI does end up in exactly that mode by the end, in spite of itself falling right back into franchise cliches. (And who said these cliches are bad anyway?)
The more damning problem with Final Fantasy XVI is that it is a forty hour game. Sometimes it’s an explosive thrill ride leading easily from one adventure to the next. Often it is a ponderous slog of unnecessary filler. If every moment of this game was just watching our hero Clive (Ben Starr) dudebro his way across preposterous action set pieces, I could cheer. When I’m stuck three feet in the muck of dull cookie-cutter sidequests, I can only see how limited the narrative apparatus is.
