2. FFXVI being anywhere even close to the top 10 much less ahead of . . . well, everything below it . . . tells me a large chunk of this community needs to go to gamer jail.
I think I might hate this game. What grinds my gears the most about it is that it feels so old. Final Fantasy used to be the trendsetter, the franchise you would point to and say "this is what video gaming can be." Instead, FFXVI feels at least 5 years behind the best-in-class of whatever its shooting for. I can easily think of several games, God of War, Elden Ring, BoTW/TotK just to name a few, that absolutely eat it's lunch in the story, gameplay, and world-building departments.
The RPG mechanics are so vestigial that I really think the game would be better if they simply weren't in there at all. There's no party, very little gear, and what gear there is barely makes a difference. There's a massive skill screen, but you can only actually equip a few skills at a time, so you're not really getting any sense of developing a character or the combat getting any more complex. It hardly seems to matter anyway, since elemental weaknesses no longer seem to be a thing so you may as well just pick the most powerful abilities.
On the combat side, the targeting and camera are absolutely whacked. It's basically impossible to target the thing you want in groups and the camera does a poor job of giving you any context of the wider combat space, which is an even larger problem than usual because there are absolutely no warning icons for attacks coming at you from off screen. They also felt the need to include QTEs with oddly long windows just so that they could flash "CINEMATIC DODGE" on the screen. What the hell? My regular dodge will serve just fine, thanks.
As far as the story goes - woof. It's like the devs watched Game of Thrones but all they took away from it was "It's Dark(TM)." The problem in FFXVI's case is that all of that darkness is completely unearned. If you're going to tear a kid to pieces, on screen, while he begs for his life,then you'd damn well better have at least spent some time to develop his character before hand. Instead, you get what's barely a stick figure characterization and the whole endeavor just ends up being misery porn.
And if anyone knows of a worse implementation for game lore than "pause the cutscene and look at this shoddy codex" please, tell me, because I can't think of one.
@missashley: I can't comment on the treatment of women, but based on my impressions of the demo, I might stay away from this one if you aren't a fan of character action games. Not because I think this is would be too complex, hard, or intimidating, but because I think this is a particularly poor implementation of the genre.
You can see it in several places in the QL, but the battle camera is terrible. A good system manages to focus the player on whatever enemy they are fighting while still allowing them to keep track of three dimensional space. FFXVI absolutely doesn't do that. It stacks enemies way to the side of the screen, which all but guarantees you will lose them the instant you dodge, and I always found the camera rotation too sluggish to keep up with the action. But then it will suddenly swing in the opposite direction and you'll have some sort of canned one-off animation where the camera whips around to the point of it being nauseating.
Also, this is admittedly more of a me thing, but I generally dislike games that rely so heavily on filling a stagger bar. Having to whale on enemies to fill an arbitrary bar just so you can use your same abilities but now have them do actual damage is extremely tedious.
Basically, there are way better games to use to get into the genre. I'd pick up either God of War and just set the difficulty down. Or if you really want a Final Fantasy game, the combat in FFVII Remake was really quite good. I'm actually kind of frustrated that they didn't just adapt that system for XVI.
@splodge: It's another example of how a bunch of out-of-touch suits who want to resurrect the mummified corpse of a once-beloved IP might actually want to try playing the original before committing to whatever atrocity they seem to be putting out the door. Or at least look at a fucking screenshot.
Goddamn, everything about that trailer pisses me off.
Wo Long has the bones of a good system going with its combat, but then it insists on throwing a bunch of things at you that take you away from it. Tons of completely useless gear? Check. An entire village that could have just been a menu? Check. Borderline incomprehensible story? Check.
On top of all that, it manages to step on just about every single quality of life rake possible, including some I didn't even know existed until I played the game. I honestly don't know how some of these things made it through play testing.
@allthedinos: My wife and I will join you in the minority. It sounds like a terrible idea to me, and people claiming Inquisition was already there I feel like don't remember Inquisition. Obviously I hope it works out, but I'm not holding my breath that an RPG maker (especially of Bioware's modern, all-over-the-place pedigree) can pull off rewarding, action-based combat.
Me four. Definitely not the direction I want as a fan of the series. This doesn't feel like a decision made because they think it will actually make for a better game. It feels much more like a trend-chasing "Crap, we really need a hit! Uh, what's popular right now? God of War won a bunch of awards, right? Let's do that!"
@bisonhero: No, I'd agree with that. Part of Forspoken's problem is that there are a lot of interesting/potentially cool ideas going on, but the opening 5-7 hours is a distillation of pretty much every single flaw the game has. Terrible writing, technical issues, walk stand and talk sections, boring combat, pacing problems, etc. It's like they were trying to get people to not like the game. There's fun to be had, but I absolutely wouldn't blame anyone for putting it down pretty quickly, especially when there are way better things like Hi-Fi Rush or the Dead Space remake out there.
Also, Square really needs to find a new visual language for "fantasy world" than "upward curving arches of rock." It makes all their games feel creatively inbred when it's in every single title they do.
Hey, you wanna talk about Forspoken's NYC being not quite right, try being a lawyer and then sitting through the first three to five minutes in that courtroom sequence. I though my brain was legitimately starting to melt.
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