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At last I have finished Final Fantasy XVI. Took a couple days to try and consolidate my thoughts, but I feel like they're still not very coherent so I'm just going to throw this post together as I think of things. Spoilers under the cut!
Getting this out of the way right away: I am not a fan of the ending lmao. I'm not exactly surprised; they were setting up a sacrificial Dion moment very blatantly, and with Joshua's health problems it's not a shock he didn't make it. (Joshua's death was also the most thematically expected.) Clive did surprise me, mostly because they already killed Josh and Dion and I really didn't think they were going to go three for three. But I'm feeling very Avengers 2012 Nick Fury about the whole thing, you know, "given that it's a stupid ass decision, I've elected to ignore it" lol.
I don't know why this ending specifically has me mad, it's like... I don't know, doesn't feel earned? It's certainly not the only sad FF ending, and I don't hate the endings of X or XIII or XV, etc. Granted, following this trend I expect to see a FFXVI-2 soon to fix things sjdhfksjdfs. But yeah all three of them dying at the end just feels pointless. (Also how dare you do that to Jill and Gav give them their boyfriend back???? And the fact Terence doesn't get a real goodbye with Dion drives me insane aaargh.)
I think if anyone had to die it should have been just Joshua, since his death had weight to the story and Clive's character and all that, sort of coming full circle from his "death" at the beginning. Dion and Clive were just an extra kick in the face for no reason. :/ Dion's is the most objective I suppose, since yeah they built up his clear need to atone for his "sins" and his ending just followed the path the writers set him on, but they didn't have to do that!! He could have survived and atoned by helping people and restoring order on the continent!! Clive though came out of nowhere lmao all of a sudden he can't handle all that power and is petrifying even though that's never been a problem for him before? lmaooo okay sure. I know there's supposed to be DLC coming out but I don't know if it's meant to be post-game or not? I assume not.
My other main complaint is the one I've had this whole time: I miss the proper JRPG party system and I think the character interactions suffered for it because Clive felt alone a lot of the time. The lack of a regular party combined with the Clive-only real-time combat made FFXVI feel more like a western RPG and not a Final Fantasy game. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, obviously, it just isn't FF-y enough for me.
All this makes it sound like I didn't like the game lol but overall I did! Even with the big batches of side quests dropping at the most random times lmao. I enjoyed the characters and the story, and while it hasn't beaten out any of my fave FF games from the top of the list, I think it's worth playing! The characters are its strongest point, which is why it's so disappointing we didn't get more interactions among them.
Clive surprised me the most. I thought he was kind of boring at the beginning, especially with Cid immediately showing him up as a character sjdfhksjdfk but Clive definitely won me over! My sweet baby boy... Cid of course was perfect, no notes there. Gav surprised me too, I didn't think he'd be a major character but I'm glad he was. His interactions with Clive were so cute, he loves and trusts Clive so muuuch 😭 (Yeah yeah Clive/Jill, Clive/Cid, whatever, where are my Clive/Gav shippers at!!) Dion is another perfect-no-notes character because I'm predictable lol. A gay prince burdened by the weight of his duties who's basically suicidal from guilt by the end of the story, you might as well have plucked him straight from my brain. Also he's a dragoon and dragoons are inherently sexy.
Joshua I liked but, to me, he was sort of middle lane? Nothing wrong with him or his story, but he also just wasn't the kind of character to have me clutching him to my chest weeping haha. Kind of disappointing but c'est la vie, they can't all be written just for me. I have been scouring the phoenixflare tags on Twitter and Tumblr though because Joshua/Dion has been consuming my thoughts for days, so there's that! I'm so sorry Terrence lmaooo I'm constitutionally incapable of just being happy with a canon gay ship when I can make life so much harder for myself. Like I'm very happy for Dion/Terence, the few scenes we got with them were very touching (though they deserved more/a proper conclusion to their story!!), but the knowledge that we COULD have gotten Josh/Dion has me like 😐 why can't anyone at Square Enix understand my vision.
Jill was, unfortunately, my biggest disappointment. I had such high hopes after being mad at FFXV having no main female characters, but honestly FFXVI was not really any better!! I wanted Jill to do so much more but the writers barely utilized her. Like Joshua, she's not a bad character, and I think her scenes with Clive were really sweet, but they just dropped the ball with her after a certain point. Like she had some interesting motivations and stuff in the beginning, but once they had her take care of the Iron Kingdom guy she sort of just faded into the background following Clive around. AND they sidelined her as Shiva after that so we don't even get any cool Shiva and Ifrit team ups. Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy without a bunch of cool female characters how did we go from Aerith/Yuna/Fran/etc to XV and XVI being like this!! It's a very sad day when my fave character in an FF game is a boy. :/
ANYWAY there were a lot of little moments between the characters I thought were really sweet or funny; the side quests were nice in that regard (the Otto/Cid backstory quest? Clive getting to take Gav and Jill on their little dates lmao) so even though I complained about them I'm glad we got them lol. Which is why I felt like things could have been even better if Clive hadn't been on his own so much, I need to see the other characters interacting with each other more and not just Clive!!
My brain has run out of thoughts, so I'll wrap this up here! If you made it through all that, congratulations. And even if you didn't, please share your thoughts I love hearing other people's opinions!! Plot commentary? Character thoughts? Gameplay comments? Fave ships? Fic recs? Or tell me what I'm wrong about lmao.
Oh also, I did write a couple short fics for Final Fantasy Kiss Battle 2024, which still has people prompting/writing so check it out!
Respite, Jill/Clive/Cid, G, prompt: Cid's never needed much looking after, but he doesn't mind it with them
Drinking Buddies, Otto/Cid, G, prompt: deep in their cups; payment for a good day's work
Getting this out of the way right away: I am not a fan of the ending lmao. I'm not exactly surprised; they were setting up a sacrificial Dion moment very blatantly, and with Joshua's health problems it's not a shock he didn't make it. (Joshua's death was also the most thematically expected.) Clive did surprise me, mostly because they already killed Josh and Dion and I really didn't think they were going to go three for three. But I'm feeling very Avengers 2012 Nick Fury about the whole thing, you know, "given that it's a stupid ass decision, I've elected to ignore it" lol.
I don't know why this ending specifically has me mad, it's like... I don't know, doesn't feel earned? It's certainly not the only sad FF ending, and I don't hate the endings of X or XIII or XV, etc. Granted, following this trend I expect to see a FFXVI-2 soon to fix things sjdhfksjdfs. But yeah all three of them dying at the end just feels pointless. (Also how dare you do that to Jill and Gav give them their boyfriend back???? And the fact Terence doesn't get a real goodbye with Dion drives me insane aaargh.)
I think if anyone had to die it should have been just Joshua, since his death had weight to the story and Clive's character and all that, sort of coming full circle from his "death" at the beginning. Dion and Clive were just an extra kick in the face for no reason. :/ Dion's is the most objective I suppose, since yeah they built up his clear need to atone for his "sins" and his ending just followed the path the writers set him on, but they didn't have to do that!! He could have survived and atoned by helping people and restoring order on the continent!! Clive though came out of nowhere lmao all of a sudden he can't handle all that power and is petrifying even though that's never been a problem for him before? lmaooo okay sure. I know there's supposed to be DLC coming out but I don't know if it's meant to be post-game or not? I assume not.
My other main complaint is the one I've had this whole time: I miss the proper JRPG party system and I think the character interactions suffered for it because Clive felt alone a lot of the time. The lack of a regular party combined with the Clive-only real-time combat made FFXVI feel more like a western RPG and not a Final Fantasy game. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that, obviously, it just isn't FF-y enough for me.
All this makes it sound like I didn't like the game lol but overall I did! Even with the big batches of side quests dropping at the most random times lmao. I enjoyed the characters and the story, and while it hasn't beaten out any of my fave FF games from the top of the list, I think it's worth playing! The characters are its strongest point, which is why it's so disappointing we didn't get more interactions among them.
Clive surprised me the most. I thought he was kind of boring at the beginning, especially with Cid immediately showing him up as a character sjdfhksjdfk but Clive definitely won me over! My sweet baby boy... Cid of course was perfect, no notes there. Gav surprised me too, I didn't think he'd be a major character but I'm glad he was. His interactions with Clive were so cute, he loves and trusts Clive so muuuch 😭 (Yeah yeah Clive/Jill, Clive/Cid, whatever, where are my Clive/Gav shippers at!!) Dion is another perfect-no-notes character because I'm predictable lol. A gay prince burdened by the weight of his duties who's basically suicidal from guilt by the end of the story, you might as well have plucked him straight from my brain. Also he's a dragoon and dragoons are inherently sexy.
Joshua I liked but, to me, he was sort of middle lane? Nothing wrong with him or his story, but he also just wasn't the kind of character to have me clutching him to my chest weeping haha. Kind of disappointing but c'est la vie, they can't all be written just for me. I have been scouring the phoenixflare tags on Twitter and Tumblr though because Joshua/Dion has been consuming my thoughts for days, so there's that! I'm so sorry Terrence lmaooo I'm constitutionally incapable of just being happy with a canon gay ship when I can make life so much harder for myself. Like I'm very happy for Dion/Terence, the few scenes we got with them were very touching (though they deserved more/a proper conclusion to their story!!), but the knowledge that we COULD have gotten Josh/Dion has me like 😐 why can't anyone at Square Enix understand my vision.
Jill was, unfortunately, my biggest disappointment. I had such high hopes after being mad at FFXV having no main female characters, but honestly FFXVI was not really any better!! I wanted Jill to do so much more but the writers barely utilized her. Like Joshua, she's not a bad character, and I think her scenes with Clive were really sweet, but they just dropped the ball with her after a certain point. Like she had some interesting motivations and stuff in the beginning, but once they had her take care of the Iron Kingdom guy she sort of just faded into the background following Clive around. AND they sidelined her as Shiva after that so we don't even get any cool Shiva and Ifrit team ups. Final Fantasy isn't Final Fantasy without a bunch of cool female characters how did we go from Aerith/Yuna/Fran/etc to XV and XVI being like this!! It's a very sad day when my fave character in an FF game is a boy. :/
ANYWAY there were a lot of little moments between the characters I thought were really sweet or funny; the side quests were nice in that regard (the Otto/Cid backstory quest? Clive getting to take Gav and Jill on their little dates lmao) so even though I complained about them I'm glad we got them lol. Which is why I felt like things could have been even better if Clive hadn't been on his own so much, I need to see the other characters interacting with each other more and not just Clive!!
My brain has run out of thoughts, so I'll wrap this up here! If you made it through all that, congratulations. And even if you didn't, please share your thoughts I love hearing other people's opinions!! Plot commentary? Character thoughts? Gameplay comments? Fave ships? Fic recs? Or tell me what I'm wrong about lmao.
Oh also, I did write a couple short fics for Final Fantasy Kiss Battle 2024, which still has people prompting/writing so check it out!
Respite, Jill/Clive/Cid, G, prompt: Cid's never needed much looking after, but he doesn't mind it with them
Drinking Buddies, Otto/Cid, G, prompt: deep in their cups; payment for a good day's work
no subject
A lot of your feelings on this game match up with mine, actually! I missed having a party; I found Jill a bit disappointing; I had issues with the quantity and distribution of sidequests. I didn't dislike Final Fantasy XVI, but it wasn't entirely what I wanted from a Final Fantasy game. I find it reassuring to see that someone else had a similar experience!
no subject
I'm glad I'm not alone in this sjhdfkshf though I didn't really look at reviews at all when it came out so I don't really know what the general consensus on the game was. I enjoyed it and would still rec it to people, but it definitely didn't feel much like a FF game.