FFXVI or Dragon Age: Veilguard?

[Serafie1999AD]

I've enjoyed games from both franchises before, which of these two would you recommend?

[Ashuran]

Serafie1999AD původně napsal:

From what I've gathered from the replies, FFXVI seems to be better, but neither game is considered good. In an FF, I'm typically looking for the world building, emotional moments between characters, epic scenes and the soundtrack. Tbh, FFs rarely have a very good story. FFs 6 and 9 had great stories, and 10 has some great writing, but the story is more linear and predictable than in the other parts. The original FFVII's story had some promise, but the spinoffs, sequels, remakes and all the retconning simply made it a mess in my eyes.

When it comes to battle systems, I rarely play FFs for battles. The only ones in the series that have had satisfying battles have been FF Tactics, FFXII (with the Struggle for Freedom mod), FFV (mostly because of the job system) and LR, although FFVII with A New Threat mod was also quite enjoyable. It depends on my mood what I want. If I want to think more in battles, then I'd play games like Baldur's Gate 3, Divinity: Original Sin II, FF Tactics etc. If I want to just have fun and enjoy epic battles, I also enjoy easy-ish action RPGs, such as Kingdom Hearts, Trials of Mana etc. Most FFs don't really have complex battle systems unmodded, and out of FFs 6-10, they're mostly "mash the Confirm button to win", followed by FFXII's "hold the analogue stick and let the Gambits win" and FFXIII's "switch paradigms and use Auto-Command to win".

For the other recent FFs, I thought FFXV's combat was decent. Some boss fights are really cinematic and visually impressive. The story was really weak, even if you watch Kingsglaive and the Brotherhood series. As for FFVII Remake, I hated that one with a passion. It basically combined everything that I hate about the FF series: the overly linear hallways from FFXIII, annoying minigames from FFX (at least Catcher Chocobo and dodging 200 thunder bolts are optional, while the almost 30-minute motorcycle minigame in Chapter 18 is not), combined with extremely padded storytelling and dungeons, making everything feel unnecessary bloated and artificially prolonged. The battles are what I hated the most. The mix of ATB and some elements of an action RPG felt like the worst of both worlds, constantly switching characters because your ally AI is useless, a really predictable enemy AI always chasing your controlled character, and the worst of all, cutscenes being the hardest part of the battles, always ruining limit breaks or ATB skills. I've never been as frustrated in FF battles. This doesn't mean the game is really challenging, just annoying. I had to force myself to play through the game, hoping it would get better (even FFXIII got better by the time you reached Pulse), but it never did. 50 hours spent on the main game, 10 hours in the DLC, and I hated about 58 hours of it. The only fun parts were certain story scenes, and the battles against Hellhouse, Arsenal and maybe the final battle against Sephiroth. After beating the game and DLC once, I uninstalled that 100 GB piece of trash to which I wasted over 40€, and I'm not planning to ever return to it. [/rant]

For other games I'm considering on a sale, there's KH1.5 & 2.5, though I'm worried about the crashes and other issues people have had. Then again, if I like KH2's abundant cutscenes and casual action battles (if playing on any difficulty lower than Proud), am I likely to enjoy FFXVI as well? I'm also considering Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. That one has overwhelmingly positive in recent reviews, so it seems like the game's problems have been fixed. Another game I'm considering is Fantasian Neo Dimension, which will be released next week.

Pnume původně napsal:

You might want to try the demo to see if it runs ok on your rig.

I tried the demo while I was in the middle of a GPU upgrade. On GTX 1070, it had frame drops to 40-50, but I mostly got it to stay at 50+ FPS by enabling FSR and Frame Generation. After upgrading to RTX 4070, it seemed to stay at 60 FPS, though enabling Native AA made some battles occasionally drop frames to 55. Reducing AA to Quality kept the FPS at 60, but I really liked how good Native AA made the image look. The cutscenes seem to be locked at 30 FPS, not sure if the fan-made fixes really fix that or if they break the in-game physics. Based on the demo, the story seemed really interesting, the dungeons felt bland and repetitive, and too early to say anything about the combat. It seemed to be getting easier when you got past the learning curve.

I decided to go for Veilguard. So far it is better than I expected. I think Veilguard should make a demo option like other game like FF16 have so people can try it out. Their game is very polarizing so having a demo option is a good way to market your product and have people have a more hand-on experience to try their product. I spent several days watching steamers and asking people about the game to have a gauge but nothing beats having the hand-on experience of playing it ourselves. But I am glad so far I am not regretting my purchase.

[Bigbazz]

FF16 is a linear action game with a load of cutscenes, it's not an RPG like previous entries. More like Crisis Core, and as that kinda game it's great, definitely underrated purely on the fact that it isn't like previous FF titles.

FF16 isn't the kinda game you replay tho, too linear and too many cutscenes, it could be a tv series.

[iameatingjam]

Bigbazz původně napsal:

FF16 is a linear action game with a load of cutscenes, it's not an RPG like previous entries. More like Crisis Core, and as that kinda game it's great, definitely underrated purely on the fact that it isn't like previous FF titles.

FF16 isn't the kinda game you replay tho, too linear and too many cutscenes, it could be a tv series.

Did you play past the beginning section? I really don't get the cutscene complaints, seems to be about the same as any other game after the opening hours.

[Bigbazz]

iameatingjam původně napsal:

Bigbazz původně napsal:

FF16 is a linear action game with a load of cutscenes, it's not an RPG like previous entries. More like Crisis Core, and as that kinda game it's great, definitely underrated purely on the fact that it isn't like previous FF titles.

FF16 isn't the kinda game you replay tho, too linear and too many cutscenes, it could be a tv series.

Did you play past the beginning section? I really don't get the cutscene complaints, seems to be about the same as any other game after the opening hours.

Without using spoilers I am over halfway through the game, major plot points with major characters are behind me. How is it anything like previous FF games to you?

FF games have a large open explorable overworld - FF16 doesn't.
FF games have exploration and freedom for large portions of the game - FF16 doesn't
FF games have a variety of optional mini-games and side activities/secrets - FF16 doesn't
FF games have multiple playable characters and team selection - FF16 doesn't
FF games have complex character progression systems - FF16 doesn't

FF16 is completely linear with mostly cutscenes and combat, it's completely on rails. It's still a good game, but it's nothing like prior FF games, it's not even really an RPG.

[Mu'Ammar of Carthus]

Veilguard is really painful to play, ngl.
For what little I tried of it, it seems they did nothing right.

[Хаягрива]

Serafie1999AD původně napsal:

I've enjoyed games from both franchises before, which of these two would you recommend?

Both.

[Seppuku]

FFXVI - maybe an 9/10 game
Dragon Age: The Veilguard - maybe a 7/10 game

Mileage may vary according to taste.

The main (but not totality of) ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for either game can be boiled down to:
FFXVI - It's not a true Final Fantasy
Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Go Woke Go Broke.

But neither are as bad as people have made out. Flaws can be found, for sure.

I think it is fair to say Dragon Age could have been written better. But it's not the worst.

Just ignore bandwagons and decide for yourself.

Same happened with Forspoken, it was definitely not a £65 game and deserved criticism, but I got it for £35 and actually enjoyed it, it felt unfinished & had problems here and there but if I listened to people I'd think it was a big heap of stinking trash.