RANT: The Game Doesn't Respect the Player's Time

[Bufudyne Dan]

Before anyone jumps to the game's defence, hear me out.

I took this game on its own merits, and it has the makings of a masterpiece action game. I wouldn't have gone through all the side content, DLC included, if it didn't do something right. But one issue that's persisted from start to finish is how much dead-air there is inbetween all the meaningful content. It takes what could've been a 10/10 game, and push it down to an 8 at best. I'll explain why.

Unskippable in-game cutscenes

These become a huge problem in repeat playthroughs, but even more so in Arcade mode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole point of Arcade Mode to let the player engage ONLY with the core combat? To trim the fat and grade them based on their performance in the story battles? Isn't that why there's an option to turn off cutscenes? Okay, so why do I have to wait minutes at a time for an in-game cinematic to end each time I chip away at a boss' health? I thought we were skipping all cutscenes, what the hell's going on here? I've already seen these moments, let me skip them and move on to the next phase of the fight. Hunting for S-ranks would be a lot more enjoyable, if it weren't for these. It's even worse during the Odin fight.

But the problems don't end there.

Slow movement speed

Clive's default movement speed is painfully slow. It's fine in the overworld, where he's given an auto-sprint and a chocobo to ride later. But in towns, in Story levels, basically everywhere else, he's stuck at his default jog. It's painfully slow. It makes getting from place to place more agonizing than it needs to be. If the movement isn't gonna be fun in any way, then there needs to be something else to make up for it, like a rewarding environment to explore (something Xenoblade 1, X and 3 do exceptionally well). But at best, you'll find a decent accessory in a chest off the beaten path, and it's hardly worth the sluggish pace Clive runs to get there. And guess what? In Arcade Mode, you still have to jog from battlefield to battlefield. Either teleport me there (since, again, it IS Arcade Mode), or give me a menu option asking me if I'm ready to proceed.

Unskippable walking sections

There aren't as many in this game as other notorious examples, but why the hell do these also appear in Arcade mode? They make any game a chore to replay, and they do nothing but cripple the experience, but doubly so in the mode you're expected to want to replay for the core gameplay (AKA, the combat. The meat and potatoes of the game).

Overly-verbose NPC's

And lastly, bearing all that in mind, the NPC's sometimes take forever to get to the point. I like banter between characters. I like nuance. I get it. And to be fair, it's not as bad as in other games (especially those where the localizers cared more about flaunting their "ye old English" than retaining the audience's engagement).

But there's still so much beating around the bush that adds nothing of value in the end, and what would otherwise be a small nitpick of mine becomes much less tolerable when the game already leeches so much time away with all its other unskippable nonsense. Sidequests are optional, I know, but my point is that it'd be a lot more enjoyable to engage with them, and the verbose dialogue less egregious, if those other issues were fixed. Of course I'm still not going to skip the side-content, because I want to get my money's worth after waiting over a year since its PS5 release.

In Conclusion

The amount of hours I've spent in this game could be cut down significantly, if it weren't for these aspects. I don't care how long or short a game is, because what matters is how meaningful those hours spent are. If a large chunk of those hours are spent waiting to engage with the good stuff, then there's a serious problem. I hope someone on the dev team realises this with the next game, because this unskippable time-wasting crap isn't what I play an action game for.

I'm not the kind of butthurt fan who hates this game purely on the basis of it not being turn-based anymore, especially since, let's face it, the turn-based FF games were never the best examples of that genre to begin with (SMT, Baten Kaitos and even the Mario RPG's surpass them in some forms or others). It was also clear that even in those games, Square would rather be making a real-time action game than a turn-based one, as the ATB Gauge did nothing but remove the player's ability to strategize and think out each turn carefully before their opponent hit them (and it ultimately just masks what's otherwise a basic and bare-bones battle system to begin with). Then when Square started shifting their approach to an action-oriented one, they weren't willing to make the necessary concessions needed for a truly-great action combat system, and we ended up with these heavily context-sensitive, easily-exploitable frankenstein's monsters for combat instead. Either iterate and improve upon the turn-based combat of past games, or go all-in on the action.

Point being, I'm glad Square finally picked a direction and went all in on it. But again, there's still a lot of work to be done in order to make this new direction work.
-Unskippable walking sections are bad game design.
-Unskippable in-game cinematics are poison to the game's pacing.
-Sluggish movement-speed is taboo if you expect the player to do so much of it in pursuit of side-quests and the almighty S-ranks.
-Verbose NPC dialogue has to be EARNED, preferably when the above issues aren't present.

[Scarlet Crusade]

You have games hidden in your profile, so we can’t see how many hours you’ve played. But in general, I agree that this game eats time, but I wasn’t offended by it. It feels cozy and takes its time, which isn’t really a problem to me. I’ve never had an issue with running speed either, and I’d wager I do a lot more of it than most, since I always speak to and eavesdrop on every NPC between every story event and side quest completed.

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Scarlet Crusade:

You have games hidden in your profile, so we can’t see how many hours you’ve played. But in general, I agree that this game eats time, but I wasn’t offended by it. It feels cozy and takes its time, which isn’t really a problem to me. I’ve never had an issue with running speed either, and I’d wager I do a lot more of it than most, since I always speak to and eavesdrop on every NPC between every story event and side quest completed.

Oh. Well, I posted a review, so maybe it'll show up there. Either way, it's over 130 hours, both DLC's included.

Anyway, I'm all for down-time, and side-content that serves as a nice change of pace, but not dead-air. I fail to see how waiting for Barnabas and Clive to finish their 2 minute-long back-and-forth before the next quick-time event, on my 5th attempt at S-ranking that battle (getting the score was easy, it was surviving that I struggled with) can be considered "cozy". The sidequests, maybe, but a sidequest can be cozy without crippling the overall pacing of the game via movement and slow dialogue. I've played plenty of other action RPG's that facilitate exploration and side-content much more strongly than FF16 does, yet they didn't feel the need to cripple their protagonists' movement speed in the process.

Also, bear in mind, a lot of the problems I've talked about are present in Arcade Mode. A mode that the devs clearly want fans of its combat to replay for higher scores and ranks. People who play Arcade Mode do so for the combat encounters, and to excel at them. That's the focal point. They're no longer there for the story, because they've already experienced it.

Imagine having to walk slowly at the same section over and over again, just to get to an enemy encounter. Whether that's the sewers leading to Benedicta, or the moment before the Leviathan fight begins.

Imagine running at Clive's slow pace, just to get from one Leg (enemy encounters) to the next, when there's no skill involved during those inbetween moments. You can't even go off the beaten path for more treasure this time, because again, it's Arcade Mode. All treasure chests and pick-ups are absent.

Imagine having to sit through entire cutscenes between the boss and Clive, just to get a QTE out of the way with, then watch more of them till the battle finally continues on to the next phase.

After a while, it gets very repetitive. Tedious. Frustrating, even. The game gets in the way of itself, and the mode fails to fulfil its intended purpose. The mode is great, in theory, as proven by the grading system. But if the goal was to prioritise gameplay over story, then they've failed at worst, and only succeeded halfway at best.

Now imagine playing through the Rising Tide DLC in Arcade Mode, where the S-rank requirement is ridiculously high compared to every other stage in that mode, and the margin for error during the Leviathan fight is even higher thanks to his instakill Tsunami countdown. The game's already asking so much of me, the player, and yet it continues to waste my time along the way with more scripted story-walking, more slowly-jogging from battle to battle with nothing interesting to do beyond consuming a Lionheart Tonic and waiting for it to refill my Limit gauge. After the 5th victory against Leviathan (not counting all the other attempts where I died and had to restart my entire progress from the first Leg), still no S-rank.

I think I can be forgiven if something like that "offends me", because at a certain point, It feels like the game's taking the piss, like the developers half-arsed this mode. Square want the same adoration as other top-tier action games like Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden and the like, but they're not wiling to put in the same amount of consideration and work it takes to make Arcade mode a viable option for fans of those games. Aside from the DmC reboot, Ninja Gaiden 3, and V's last mission, I can't ever recall a moment in those games where those games wasted my time.

Arcade Mode could be exactly that, had they addressed the issues I mentioned, but it's not. Instead, it cranks up all of Bayonetta 2 and 3's worst aspects (the walking, the QTE's) and even some of Hi-Fi Rush's only flaws (having to stop and wait for the unskippable story segment to end so I can get on with replaying the level), resulting in a mode that's clearly not fit for purpose and still needs more work. If the game's gonna force me to stroll from Leg to Leg, the least it could do is allow me to sprint. If not, a teleporter would suffice.

Taking Arcade Mode out of the equation, my issues still stand, albeit not as strongly. I'm fine with a slow-burner in, say, a visual novel, or a puzzle game, or a point & click adventure, because that's exactly what I'm signing up for (though even visual novels let you skip dialogue you've already read). But FF16 is taking a lot of ques from fast-paced, combat-heavy action games, enemy-step and all, and then suffocating that gameplay with these clashing aspects that constantly rip control away from the player and arbitrarily push them further from their goal.

[Calm Hostage]

I just finished it, 75 hours playtime. Not the longest RPG I've played, but one of the more gruelling ones. Glad I passed on buying the DLC.

In a way, it is a privilege to have 99% of everything voice acted, that's very rare in a game this length. Still, I think I'm good for the next 7 years, or however long it'll take for 17 to come out, lol.

[Dumar]

Yea, i'm 11 hours in, tried Arcade Mode once, and i was so annoyed having to manually skip cutscenes (for the ones that were skippable,) and re-tread ALL of the old dialogue - Awful, just awful.

I refuse to play Arcade and bother with keeping my head in the combo-game knowing that every one of those stages will retread the SAME EXACT story gameplay verbatium. STRANGE decision making... It just should be battle after battle with ZERO running/traversal... Its ARCADE mode for crying out loud!

Were the devs even thinking at all when the decided, lets do arcade mode and celebrate our combat system, but make it a chore/guauntlet to retell the same exact gameplay loop... So WEIRD!

Yea, fack Arcade mode - I won't bother, seeing if gear or some cool spell is hidden behind it... Nope, nope nope.

Dialogue in this game is mostly boring... Not gonna lie.

EDIT:
Also, everyone is too clean, the char models... Everyone is too clean-cut, like they all shop at Sephora and all sing in a K-Pop band.

I thought this was a Western RPG inspired? Seems more so K-Pop inspired, hehe.
I'm pretty disappoint in this game... Its too easy, AUDIO mixing is off with 5.1 surround sound, can't hear ANY dialogue over action/music and sound-effects during combat.

No in-game options to force Stereo or adjust Surround Sound settings etc.
Some areas are oddly demanding on 4090... DLSS barely claws back any performance between Quality/Balance/Performance.

Feels like the game areas render all textures without culling anything in the distance or something, possibly why some towns are oddly demanding - With that said, looking at a wall/sky does improve FPS instantly, so i guess the game-engine IS culling to some extend but I don't know...

[Scarlet Crusade]

I do feel like most of your gripes are related to Arcade Mode, which is fine, and understandable, but I’ll never touch that mode, personally, as the gameplay is the weakest aspect of the game I think. So what I described with my feelings on the experience are with regards to enjoying the story, characters, and world. I can see how it would be more annoying under a purely gameplay-focused lens. All I have left to do is the Leviathan DLC and then the final boss, but I’ve had a good time so far.

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Scarlet Crusade:

I do feel like most of your gripes are related to Arcade Mode, which is fine, and understandable, but I’ll never touch that mode, personally, as the gameplay is the weakest aspect of the game I think. So what I described with my feelings on the experience are with regards to enjoying the story, characters, and world. I can see how it would be more annoying under a purely gameplay-focused lens. All I have left to do is the Leviathan DLC and then the final boss, but I’ve had a good time so far.

A good portion, but not all of them. As I said, the main story suffers from this, as does Stage Select (replaying the stages as they were, which is useful for retrieving items you might've missed), and the sidequests especially so. Good for you that you personally won't touch Arcade Mode, but what you personally will or won't do doesn't change the fact that these flaws bog the experience down, nor does it impede my right to criticise the game.

If we're including exploration and general movement as part of the gameplay, then I'd agree they weaken the overall gameplay experience, sure, but the combat does a lot to elevate the gameplay. That's why I posted this discussion in the first place. Had Square Enix played to their strengths more and miminised (or outright removed) these tedious aspects, we'd have an easy contender for a 9/10 game at least.

I enjoyed this game in spite of its flaws, and its highs reach higher than any real-time Final Fantasy game I've played, purely on the gameplay front. But here's the thing; you don't just judge a game's quality based on the aspects you personally engage with. You judge it as a whole. There's a key difference between a game's objective qualities/faults, and a person's personal enjoyment of it. The game has other faults with its story and characters, so it's not "bad purely under a gameplay-focused lense", but my biggest issues with the game, the biggest faults that hurt my enjoyment of it, are with its gameplay, because they get in the way of one of its greatest strengths. I don't want Square Enix to fall into the same trappings with the next game, whether that's FF16-2 or the next numbered game. It's quite simple.

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Calm Hostage:

I just finished it, 75 hours playtime. Not the longest RPG I've played, but one of the more gruelling ones. Glad I passed on buying the DLC.

In a way, it is a privilege to have 99% of everything voice acted, that's very rare in a game this length. Still, I think I'm good for the next 7 years, or however long it'll take for 17 to come out, lol.

The voice acting is one thing I do appreciate about this game. It's definitely a AAA Japanese game, for better or worse. Though with all the money and resources poured into it, I just wish it was spent more wisely on solving the issues I mentioned. Considering how laborous it would've been to develop the game, I doubt making in-game cinematics and walking sections skippable would be that hard, nor would including a sprint feature for the stages.

Arcade Mode not withstanding (along with the other issues baked into the game), I do actually recommend both DLC's. Echoes first, then Rising Tide. Rising Tide features the Leviathan Eikon, and it's both really unique and useful, so if nothing else, I'm glad I played it to add one more tool to my arsenal (especially considering Water is my favourite element). I just wish those issues I mentioned weren't there. I wouldn't be as mad at Arcade Mode's shortcomings as I am, were the S-rank requirement for Leviathan's stage not so high, because it basically brings my biggest issues to the forefront.

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Dumar:

Yea, i'm 11 hours in, tried Arcade Mode once, and i was so annoyed having to manually skip cutscenes (for the ones that were skippable,) and re-tread ALL of the old dialogue - Awful, just awful.

I refuse to play Arcade and bother with keeping my head in the combo-game knowing that every one of those stages will retread the SAME EXACT story gameplay verbatium. STRANGE decision making... It just should be battle after battle with ZERO running/traversal... Its ARCADE mode for crying out loud!

Were the devs even thinking at all when the decided, lets do arcade mode and celebrate our combat system, but make it a chore/guauntlet to retell the same exact gameplay loop... So WEIRD!

Yea, fack Arcade mode - I won't bother, seeing if gear or some cool spell is hidden behind it... Nope, nope nope.

Dialogue in this game is mostly boring... Not gonna lie.

EDIT:
Also, everyone is too clean, the char models... Everyone is too clean-cut, like they all shop at Sephora and all sing in a K-Pop band.

I thought this was a Western RPG inspired? Seems more so K-Pop inspired, hehe.
I'm pretty disappoint in this game... Its too easy, AUDIO mixing is off with 5.1 surround sound, can't hear ANY dialogue over action/music and sound-effects during combat.

No in-game options to force Stereo or adjust Surround Sound settings etc.
Some areas are oddly demanding on 4090... DLSS barely claws back any performance between Quality/Balance/Performance.

Feels like the game areas render all textures without culling anything in the distance or something, possibly why some towns are oddly demanding - With that said, looking at a wall/sky does improve FPS instantly, so i guess the game-engine IS culling to some extend but I don't know...

The game does let you turn off all cutscenes on the Arcade Mode level select menu, but this game's definition of "all cutscenes" doesn't apply to the in-game ones, like the ones you constantly see during bossfights.

If it weren't for these annoyances, I'd love Arcade Mode to death, because Leviathan's stage not withstanding, it brings out the best in the combat. It's everything I was hoping for, but the issues I mentioned become harder to ignore the more stages I unlock for it, culminating in the Rising Tide's Arcade stage. Rising Tide has my favourite Eikon abilities (Leviathan's), but the worst S-rank requirement in Arcade Mode, and the worst margin for error in the entire game.

[Metro]

Lots of non-skippable text/dialogue and cutscenes in a final fantasy game? Wow, that must be a crime

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Metro:

Lots of non-skippable text/dialogue and cutscenes in a final fantasy game? Wow, that must be a crime

You clearly didn't read my post the whole way through. Try again.

[XartaX]

My main problem is that there's a lot of side quest waffle of LOW quality. I wouldn't mind if the writing was good, but the writing is really, really bad. Like high school level bad.

Spoiler for Dalimil
For example, take the ending quest line in Dalimil. Everyone turns on Lubor because he turns out to be a bearer. Now I'm totally fine with and ready to enjoy me some fantasy racism, but this is extremely badly written. Not only is Lubor before being exposed as a bearer the most popular man in town, but he also has never done anyone in the village anything wrong, and in fact actively saved and helped everyone over and over. Even literal KKK members back in the day would give black people a pass if they knew that particular person and they had done them good (there's literally a documentary about a black dude befriending KKK members). Something like "Okay, bearers are monsters and should be put to the sword... but you're different". It's also basically an end-of-the-world scenario, so it's not like they have to be afraid of backlash from central governmental entities, etc. either. They can still be super racist, but the characters here just don't make any coherent sense. Of course you can write a story where they still end up hating him, but it just comes out of nowhere with no justification or build up.

[MrSoul]

Originally posted by Calm Hostage:

I just finished it, 75 hours playtime. Not the longest RPG I've played, but one of the more gruelling ones. Glad I passed on buying the DLC.

In a way, it is a privilege to have 99% of everything voice acted, that's very rare in a game this length. Still, I think I'm good for the next 7 years, or however long it'll take for 17 to come out, lol.

Ngl. Kinda how I feel after beating most FF games lol love em, but my god can that last act drag on.

[Comae®]

Nah, the only issue on game design is there is too many useless cutscenes everywhere, forcing you to NOT PLAYING for useless reasons every 1 minute.
You got a quest telling you to kill some monsters you know you're going to have 5 useless 15 sec cutscenes.

Period.

If you dont like people talking and long cutscene, stop playing FF, thanks.
And thats wrong, the cutscene arent too long, the characters arent talking too long, they just speak about useless things because there is too many useless cutscenes instead of a real good designed game.

[moshiwakeda]

I think it's a great game, bu tit's the first time I felt like there was too much voice acting. The side characters were not interesting enough to warrant it. And the fact that they all speak with an English accent (with the exception of a handful) in the entire world was jarring to me.

The actors were talented, so I felt kinda bad for skipping a lot of it with the side quests.

But the problem with side content is that it has to feel mid, otherwise it overshadows the main story. I think they did a good job in at least trying to make the stories relevant to what is happening in the world. It just didn't quite hit the mark for me, but I still think it was a great effort

The bottom line is that these are all optional, and nobody forced me to access that content. All quests give me the option not to do them


What you feel is relevant or not is mostly based of what you pay attention to. If you're not enjoying something, you won't pay attention, and then it spirals into even less enjoyment. Eventually the game feels worse than it is.

On the other hand, where does the desire come from to make the assertion that your subjective impressions are equal to facts? People come in here with loaded questions like "Why is X so Y?". It's not even possible to start a conversation that way

[Bufudyne Dan]

Originally posted by Comae®:

Nah, the only issue on game design is there is too many useless cutscenes everywhere, forcing you to NOT PLAYING for useless reasons every 1 minute.
You got a quest telling you to kill some monsters you know you're going to have 5 useless 15 sec cutscenes.

Period.

If you dont like people talking and long cutscene, stop playing FF, thanks.
And thats wrong, the cutscene arent too long, the characters arent talking too long, they just speak about useless things because there is too many useless cutscenes instead of a real good designed game.

Since you didn't read my post the whole way through, let me repeat myself. A cutscene can be as long as it wants, so long as there's an option to SKIP it if I've already seen it once. It's not that unreasonable.

Hence why I take such issue with Arcade Mode in its current state, though the main game and stage-select would both benefit from having these issues addressed. I want my moments of play separate from my moments of story (exceptions being dialogue during gameplay), and I don't like when developers intentionally cripple gameplay, rip control away from the player during said gameplay, and expect us to be fine with experiencing it adnauseum when those of us who enjoy the combat want to excel at it and hunt S-ranks.

I also agree with you that what's said is useless during NPC dialogue, which is why I explicitly stated it was overly-verbose and characters sometimes (not in every case, but sometimes) take forever to get to the point. That's NPC dialogue though. Some cutscenes suffer from this, sure, but again, my issue wasn't so much with the cutscenes.

I'm all for world-building, character-development, and pacing a scene appropriately for the given situation. What I'm NOT okay with, is a game squandering time that could be better spent elsewhere. All this fluff, all this padding, all this useless, menial information, when those resources could've been spent addressing more glaring issues with the story.

Final Fantasy isn't a franchise immune from criticism, my friend. Believe it or not, I don't pray to the church of Square Enix every day. I do play other JRPG's outside of that company, and I've seen these issues better tackled elsewhere. I thought I made myself abundantly clear on this matter, but you still misrepresented my point and misquoted me to then make the same exact point I was making, and pat yourself on the back for it. You're quite literally Mermaid Man.
"What if we help you?"
"That's a terrible idea! But what if YOU help ME?"