I rarely get to play a video game to completion. Usually that’s because I get distracted, and then don’t come back to the game, even if I played a fair bit of it. So the fact that I finish a game says something in and of itself. (Even, I suppose, if that’s just that I’m not that busy at the moment. In this case, that’s definitely not true. Plenty busy.)
I first played Final Fantasy when it came out on the NES. It was the first RPG I played, and I absolutely loved it. (At the time, my family had one of those conversion vans with a TV and an NES. It was the only video game platform we owned, so I could only play when we were driving somewhere. I used to ask if we could drive a bit more, just so I could keep playing. Yeah. There’s a reason my kids all have access to pretty much every video game system known to man . . .)
In any case, I’ve stuck with the Final Fantasy series since then. I’ve probably completed . . . half of the games. Not all of them came out in America on the first release, but I’ve played almost all the ones that did. It’s been interesting to see them evolve over time from an almost turn based system to a much more action-oriented franchise. They’ve waffled between straight up fantasy, steam punk, and science fiction. Characters appear in some of the games multiple times. I’m still partial to the old school fun of the first version, just because of nostalgia, but I still have liked them all.
The 16th installment was fairly different from the others in that you really only play as one character the whole time. You’ve got teammates, but you have almost no control over what any of them do. It’s not really an open world–more a series of individual maps that you explore one at a time. And the combat system is much more “jam the B button multiple times in a row until whatever you’re fighting is dead.” It didn’t really feel complex from a gaming perspective. The armor and weapons you can get are all pretty much just statistical upgrades instead of doing anything different. The quests you receive are all “go to A and pick up B and bring it to C,” so not much in the way of inventiveness there, either.
So why did I finish the game?
The spectacle. The characters are complex, the plot is . . . kind of meandering, but it’s easily the best game I’ve played in terms of making big battles matter. When you’re fighting against a world boss, you really feel like you’re fighting against something that makes you seem minuscule in comparison. I enjoyed seeing the story unfold as I played. Sometimes, the cut scenes were actually problematic, since they’d go on for over a half hour before you could save. The combat wasn’t really difficult, and the game is very forgiving, starting you over at a convenient spot if you ever die. So really, it was just playing for the experience of seeing it all play out.
I do wish the game had been less bloody, and I have no idea why they felt the need to add a slew of four letter words to the mix. I would have liked to play the game with my kids, but there was no way that was going to happen because of those stylistic decisions. Decisions I didn’t really feel brought anything extra to the table. (It’s as if creators assume if their characters use the F word a bunch, then people will take them more seriously. Whatever.)
Still, it was a fun time throughout. I’m not quite sure what to give it for a review. Experience was probably an 8/10, occasionally hitting 10/10 at times. The rest of the game was more like a 6/10. This ends up being a review where the final rating doesn’t matter nearly as much as the review itself. If it sounds up your alley, you should give it a shot. I had a great time with it, despite its shortcomings.