‘Final Fantasy 16’ review: what ‘Game Of Thrones’ could have been

NME

Give a monkey a typewriter and you will, as the saying goes, eventually get Shakespeare. Follow that logic and circulate 30 Game Of Thrones box sets through Square Enix, make watching the HBO show mandatory, and you’ll get Final Fantasy 16: a grimy medieval fantasy filled with political intrigue, clashing armies, and an abundance of scowling Brits.

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A role-playing hack-and-slash, Final Fantasy 16 follows Clive Rosfield, a noble-born soldier whose family is caught up in a night of politically-motivated slaughter. Though Clive survives, he’s given a facial tattoo marking him as a magic-wielding Bearer and hauled off as frontline fodder for the Holy Empire of Sanbreque. After a 13-year time skip, Clive — who’s spent the time fighting as part of the Empire’s slave caste — comes out surlier than ever, banding up with Cidolfus Telamon (Ralph Ineson) and a likeminded band of misfits to pursue vengeance and create a better world for Bearers.

It’s a grim story, and Game Of Thrones‘ influence on Final Fantasy 16 is evident — right down to their shared interest in dramatic throat-slitting, dialogue punctuated by ten flavours of “fuck”, and lovable Geordie sidekicks. The kingdoms of Valisthea are locked in constant warfare, exacerbated by power brokers and schemers, while a supernatural phenomenon called Blight threatens to end their squabbles for good. It’s a dark pivot for Square Enix — especially coming from Final Fantasy 15‘s nice-boy-road-trip — but it’s well-executed, as the mature tone provides space to tackle stories of persecution, classism and trauma in meaningful ways.

Subsequently, the morality of Valisthea’s inhabitants is disparate. One side quest sees Clive uncover a noble family murdering Bearers for fun, while turning over other rocks will reveal common folk risking their lives to help Bearers because it’s the right thing to do. For many side quests, their compelling characters are reward enough for detouring from the main quest.

As an added incentive, Valisthea is gorgeous — even on its deathbed. Clive rarely stays in one place too long, so the lands untouched by Blight serve as brief yet beautiful setpieces for Final Fantasy 16‘s visuals to work their magic. The constant drizzle of Rosaria’s marshlands look fantastic on the PS5, while sunnier spots, such as Dhalmekian’s sun-scorched deserts or Sanbreque’s lush forests, inject vivid colour to Valisthea’s fast-greying palette.

Final Fantasy 16 isn’t completely open-world — you bounce between these areas via a world map pockmarked with fast-travel points. However, each spot is dense enough to offer an engrossing vertical slice of life in the kingdom they belong to, which transforms a series of otherwise-scattered zones into feeling like a rich, interconnected universe with a glut of high-quality side quests to justify revisiting its many locales.

However, touring Valisthea is no easy feat. Clive’s mission puts him at odds with just about every soldier on the continent, and in tandem with the world’s monsters and magic-addled beasts, combat is a constant inevitability. As someone who bounced off Final Fantasy 15‘s combat for feeling too hands-off, it’s a relief to say that 16‘s combat — helmed by Devil May Cry designer Ryota Suzuki — is fast, fluid, and rewards players who fight with flare.

While lesser enemies can be diced up with a flurry of sword swings, beefier foes and bosses come with a Stagger gauge that opens them up to massive damage if it’s broken — meaning last-second dodges, risky parries and precise attack combinations are all encouraged. While you can give specific commands to Clive’s loyal hound Torgal, other party members act autonomously — which feels necessary, as 16‘s hack-and-slash pivot offers the series’ most intensive combat in its 36-year history.

Besides his sword, Clive also has access to Eikon abilities: powerful magic granted by Valisthea’s all-powerful Eikons. As you gain more of these abilities through the main quest, you’re given more room to workshop your own fighting style, whether that’s embracing Bahamut’s slow-to-charge but devastating magic attacks, taking to aerial combat with Garuda, or beating soldiers to death with stone fists. This means combat keeps its thrill right up to the game’s end, as shaking up your Eikon loadout means completely rethinking how you approach each fight.

While these Eikon abilities vastly enhance run-of-the-mill combat encounters, certain battles also see Clive transform into his own Eikon, Ifrit: a smoldering behemoth capable of shifting mountain ranges and incinerating forests. While Clive’s combat style demands dexterity due to his health bar’s fragility, Ifrit is a savage powerhouse, meaning each elemental kaiju battle is a straightforward clash of claws and teeth. These battles are relatively rare and exceptionally fun, meaning it never fails to raise the stakes when puny Clive tags Ifrit in for a scenery-chewing bout.

While Final Fantasy 16‘s boss fights are generally exceptional, later encounters have a habit of overstaying their welcome. Ludicrous health pools rob certain important battles of their urgency, and the game’s later villains have a habit of hiding two — sometimes three — health bars, eliciting more sighs than gasps when they appear. Likewise, main quests can over-indulge in linear avenues of repetitive battles, which makes certain stages feel bloated. Final Fantasy 16‘s combat is brilliant, yet as the game’s story started building momentum, I found myself engaging less with the endless killing.

To its credit, that’s partly because I very quickly fell in love with the ambitious story that Final Fantasy 16 tells. At its executive level, this is a story about six scheming kingdoms fighting for the scraps of a dying world, garnished with cinematics of warring armies and their Eikons battling like haphazard nuclear bombs. Yet it’s the smaller, human element that gives Final Fantasy 16‘s macrocosmic story its stakes.

Clive — surly, scowling, and drily hilarious — works through a lifetime of trauma while saving the world, driven by an extraordinary performance from Ben Starr. Companion and fellow Dominant Jill Warrick is equally compelling, along with the unfathomably charismatic Cid, who leads the pair in fighting for an independent nation of Bearers. That’s to say nothing of their scene-stealing Geordie scout Gav, Clive’s numerous allies, or the long list of reprehensible villains standing in their way. It takes a little under 40 hours to clear Final Fantasy 16‘s campaign — vastly longer if you hoover up every side quest and activity on offer— but it blitzes through that runtime with ease, thanks to its ever-growing stakes and captivating cast.

Certain elements of Final Fantasy 16, such as its story and characters, are triumphs that we’ve come to expect from Final Fantasy. Yet instead of playing it safe, Square Enix embraced innovation, pushing its own boundaries with reinvented combat and a far darker setting — and it’s these triumphs that have forged Final Fantasy 16 into a truly exceptional game.

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