Returnal

Rogue-like third-person shooter Returnal is relentlessly unforgiving, a game in which time is an agonising loop for astronaut Selene after she crash lands on the hostile alien world Atrophos. Otherworldly creatures stalk cadaverous biomes, hurling bioluminescent bullet hell between Selene’s scavenging for artifacts, resources, and ether. Its challenge can put players off but stick around and the accumulated muscle memory makes subsequent playthroughs a breeze. Returnal’s emotional narrative weighs heavier on successive runs too when the unfolding of events has already been discovered.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

Kojima Productions delivered one of the best stealth experiences of recent memory with Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain. The game meshes together a great story filled with underlying themes along with an open world that’s quite literally a playground of possibilities. It’s one of the best games that use the concept of systemic world design to the fullest extent, and it’s really fun to bend these systems to your will and come up with interesting solutions to a variety of problems.

The game starts out really strong, and Kojima ensures gradual progression as new tools start to open up and missions get more complex with new enemy types and labyrinthian designs – forcing you to use everything in your arsenal to get through it all. But once you get past Mission 31, you notice that the “new missions” are actually just rehashed older missions with new mission clear constraints tacked on top for good measure. It’s still fun to clear out these missions, but stripping away the freedom to cause chaos can also turn some people off – and that coupled with the fact that it’s all essentially rehashed content built to pad out the game can tamper with the enjoyment.

That’s as per GamesIndustry’s Christopher Dring, who recently took to Twitter to reveal that though Final Fantasy 16 has debuted on top of the weekly UK physical charts (as per data provided by the Gfk), its physical launch sales are still 74% lower than those of its predecessor, Final Fantasy 15.

There are, of course, a few caveats to note here, chief among them being the fact that the share of digital sales for games has increased significantly since FF15’s 2016 launch, which means we won’t have a full picture of exactly how Final Fantasy 16 has fared upon release until information on its initial digital sales has also become available. It’s also worth noting that while Final Fantasy 15 released as a multiplatform title, its successor is available exclusively on the PS5.

Additionally, Dring also notes that in spite of its lower numbers, Final Fantasy 16 has still had a bigger physical launch in the UK than the likes of Dead Island 2 and Diablo 4, both of which are games that have seen impressive sales when digital is included.

Prior to Final Fantasy 16’s launch, it was claimed in reports that Square Enix was “panicking slightly” over the action RPG’s pre-order numbers, which were tracking behind Final Fantasy 15, prompting the publisher to kick off marketing for the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth earlier than it had originally planned.

In our review of Final Fantasy 16, we awarded it a score of 10/10, saying, “Final Fantasy 16 isn’t just a stellar video game with gorgeous graphics and incredible combat. It’s also an emotionally engaging experience and the absolute peak of everything the series stands for.” Read the full review through here.

You can check out the full weekly UK retail charts through here.

Final Fantasy 16 is No.1 this week in the UK, but as boxed launches go, it wasn’t a particularly strong one. Physical sales are 74% lower than the launch week of Final Fantasy 15 in 2016. Obviously, digital is a much much bigger component of sales today. That data comes later

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) June 25, 2023

Final Fantasy 16’s UK physical launch was bigger than Diablo 4’s and Dead Island 2’s, so I really wouldn’t conclude anything from the boxed figures. It sits behind Resident Evil 4, Star Wars, Hogwarts and Zelda in terms of week 1 boxed sales.

— Christopher Dring (@Chris_Dring) June 25, 2023

The last time a new numbered Final Fantasy game was universally (or near-universally) praised upon release was Final Fantasy 10. That was twenty-two years ago. There’s absolutely no denying that Final Fantasy obviously still remains an absolute behemoth of the gaming medium, but equally inarguable is the fact that the series has lost much of that prestige and luster over the years. Where once it would routinely deliver genre-defining and industry-shaking games, now, you have to go back 22 years for the last time that happened.

Lately, however, it seems like the winds of change are coming. Final Fantasy 16 showed incredible promise back when it was first unveiled in 2020, and it’s looked increasingly good with each new showing- and we’ve had a lot of showings. Clearly, the gravity and importance of this release isn’t lost on the development team handling the game, because it’s not just the fans and those looking at the project from the outside in who’re desperate for Final Fantasy 16 to avoid the mistakes that some of its predecessors have made- its developers seem to feel the same way. In particular, they seem hellbent on ensuring that they don’t trip into the same pits that 2016’s Final Fantasy 15 did.

What were some of Final Fantasy 15’s biggest issues? The biggest, without a shadow of doubt, was its story. The core cast of the Hardy Boys was fun to hang out with, sure, but the story of the game as a whole was an incoherent mess. That, of course, is because it wasn’t the full story- it was just part of a larger tale that Square Enix, in all its wisdom, decided to tell across multiple cross-media projects. If you wanted to have any hope of following Final Fantasy 15’s story, you’d have to first watch the animated film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy 15 and the animated series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy 15 before playing the game. Many events crucial to the overarching plot happened off-screen in the game, leaving you wondering, more than a few times throughout the experience, just what the hell was going on.

For a series that has always been known for its captivating stories, that’s a big red flag. Yes, some of these problems were fixed to some extent with the release of Royal Edition, but a) they were just slightly less problematic at that point, and b) the base experience, which is what many people’s experience with the game was, wasn’t up to scratch. So as we said- a big red flag. And it’s one that Final Fantasy 16 seems keen on avoiding.

Its developers have, in fact, explicitly said that they want to avoid those same mistakes, that telling a cohesive standalone story was something the development team decided to do early on. In a recent interview with Easy Allies, FF16 producer Naoki Yoshida said, “You kind of have to look back on what came before when approaching development, and looking back at the most recent, Final Fantasy 15, to see what they did right and what they did wrong. While there’s a lot of things that people enjoyed about Final Fantasy 16, there’s also people that were upset that it wasn’t a complete story or that they were promised certain things that ended up being canceled, and we wanted to make sure that we cover those in Final Fantasy 16 – as in we were going to focus on telling a complete story from beginning to end and not make those same mistakes as 15 did.”

Now, telling a complete story from beginning to end should be a pre-requisite in any game. Of course it should. But Final Fantasy as a series loves to expand on its universes with spinoffs, direct sequels, cross-media projects, you name it. That the dev team at Square Enix decided this time to shed all of those excesses and focus on crafting one, single standalone experience is, on paper, the bare minimum- but they’re not exactly known for their consistently sound decision making at Square Enix, so suffice it to say, we’re more than a little relieved that Final Fantasy 16 won’t suffer those same pitfalls.

And did you notice how Yoshida brought up “certain things that ended up being cancelled” for Final Fantasy 15? He is, of course, referring to the game’s ambitious post-launch roadmap, which originally included plans for six DLC episodes. Only three were released, with the other three being cancelled- which means an incoherent half-complete story was left forever unfinished. Final Fantasy 16 is tackling that problem from two directions, because not only is it being billed as a complete, self-sufficient story, Square Enix also has no plans right now for any DLC for the game.

Speaking recently with Game Informer, producer Naoki Yoshida said, “It’s a one-off game. We’re asking players to pay the full price for this experience, and so we want an experience that’s going to equal the amount of money that players are going to be paying and we want them to have satisfaction equal to what they paid or even more than that.” Encouraging words, to say the least.

Then there’s the matter of FF16’s open world- or the lack thereof. While it’s easy to give in to the urge of expecting every major AAA release in today’s day and age to be open world, that’s not what Square Enix is doing here. With Final Fantasy 16, the development team’s primary focus has clearly been on telling the story they want to tell (the game has over 11 hours of cinematics, after all), and wanting to avoid diluting that, and wanting to avoid creating an open world for the heck of it, was why they decided not to do an open world setting. And interestingly enough, once again, they looked at the stumbles of Final Fantasy 15 while making that decision.

“If we look back at Final Fantasy 15, a lot of the criticism about that game was kind of centered on the story,” Yoshida told Game Informer. “‘Some of the storytelling elements weren’t as good as they could have been,’ or, ‘Towards the end, the story kind of loses its focus,’ or, ‘We have this story that needs to be told in DLC’ and then that DLC gets canceled so it can’t be told.

“So there are lots of problems there with the storytelling that we find. And for Final Fantasy 16, we wanted to make sure that again, our focus [is] on storytelling so that we can cover those gaps that [FF15] had.”

“For example, if you create this open world of the 23 wards of Tokyo, then basically, your story has to take place in the 23 wards of Tokyo, and it can’t take place outside of that,” he continued. “You can create more areas outside of that, but then that takes a lot of resources, and the more that you create, then the bigger chance that you have of that giant area that you created becoming empty, and that’s the one thing that players hate the most: [a] huge open world but there’s nothing to do in it.”

Now, it’s worth pointing out that not everything Final Fantasy 16 is doing has gone down well with some sections of the series’ fanbase, at least in the lead-up to launch, chief among them being its action-heavy combat and its focus on just a single playable character. There are FF fans out there who feel the upcoming action RPG is losing the essence of the franchise. Of course, the essence of Final Fantasy is a nebulous concept, to say the least, because this is a series that has radically changed its identity time and time again- but whether or not Final Fantasy 16 does end up falling foul of however you define that essence is something we’ll only find out when we actually play it.

FF16 may make mistakes – that’s always a potential danger with pretty much every single game in existence, regardless of the franchise or the developer – but if it does, they will be new mistakes. And if nothing else, it’s incredibly reassuring to know that the major blunders Square Enix made with Final Fantasy 15 won’t be rearing their head again.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

That, however, will not be the case with Final Fantasy 16. Speaking in a recent interview with Easy Allies, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida said that the upcoming action RPG’s development team took special care to look back at Final Fantasy 15 and take steps to ensure that it avoids making the same mistakes as its predecessor. According to Yoshida, Final Fantasy 16 is going to tell “a complete story.”

“Not just for Final Fantasy 16, but for Creative Business Unit III as a whole, our kind of motto is to create a game that we as developers would enjoy playing while keeping the project in the black,” Yoshida said. “And because Final Fantasy 16 is not just a solo project, it comes in a series where you have 1 to 15, you kind of have to look back on what came before when approaching development, and looking back at the most recent, Final Fantasy 15, to see what they did right and what they did wrong.

“While there’s a lot of things that people enjoyed about Final Fantasy 15 there’s also people that were upset that it wasn’t a complete story or that they were promised certain things that ended up being canceled, and we wanted to make sure that we cover those in Final Fantasy 16 – as in we were going to focus on telling a complete story from beginning to end and not make those same mistakes as 15 did. And not just having a story that’s from beginning to end, but also a story that’s going to resonate with all types of players – the older players like me but also younger players – to have something that players are going to be able to understand and have fun.”

Plenty of new gameplay footage and story and gameplay details for Final Fantasy 16 have also recently emerged, courtesy of a fresh round of hands-on impressions- you can check all of that out through here.

Final Fantasy 16 is set to launch exclusively for the PS5 on June 22. It will also receive a demo a couple of weeks before launch, which will allow players to carry over their progress into the full game.

As the first mainline title since 2016’s Final Fantasy 15, it’s generated endless amounts of hype throughout the years, which has reached a fever pitch in recent months. A lot is changing for fans of the long-running RPG series, from the overall tone and atmosphere thanks to a gritty medieval fantasy setting to the combat and world design.

But how does it compare to Final Fantasy 15, which also took liberties with the franchise’s norms when it launched back in the day? Let’s look at 15 of the biggest differences you should know about.

More Mature Story

While Final Fantasy 15 did have some dark elements here and there, including blood, Final Fantasy 16 is on another level. It’s the first game in the series to be rated M for Mature by the Entertainment Software Rating Board in the US due to Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Violence and more. There are blood spatters, dismemberment, and even some extremely choice curse words. It’s a lot to take in, especially for Final Fantasy fans that aren’t used to this level of gore, so be warned.

Combat Differences

Final Fantasy 16’s combat is entirely real-time, which has caused friction with some long-time fans. The action is reminiscent of a character-based hack-and-slash action game, as Clive unleashes weapon attacks, spells, and dodges in real time. Though there’s no blocking, it has a parry system, which occurs when your attack collides with an enemy’s. You can also activate Limit Breaks with enough attacks, boosting Clive’s damage and triggering health regeneration.

Final Fantasy 15 offers two combat modes – Active and Wait. Active, as the name indicates, is real-time combat, but Wait mode isn’t necessarily turn-based. Instead, it pauses the action when Noctis isn’t moving, giving him time to scan enemies for weaknesses and plan a strategy. When you move again, the action resumes, but you must keep moving throughout a fight.

Normal attacks, magic and items are available, and Noctis can perform team-up combos with other party members. However, Magic Points are required to block or parry attacks. There’s also the Break Damage Limit, allowing party members to deal more than 9999 damage in a single hit. Magic spells can also break the limit with the Limit Break effect, and Summons and Armiger Unleashed (added in the Royal Edition) are also capable of dealing much higher damage.

Modes and Difficulty Options

Difficulty options are a rather interesting discussion in Final Fantasy 16…because it doesn’t have them. Instead, you have two modes – Story Focused and Action – with the only real difference being the Timely Accessories. Equipped at the start in Story Focused Mode, they include one-button combos and slowing down the action for easy dodging. They take up equipment slots, so you’re encouraged to remove them eventually. In Action Mode, they’re not available from the start.

Final Fantasy 15, meanwhile, has Easy and Normal difficulties, with the former adding the Carbuncle. It heals the leader if they’re KO’d while increasing Strength and Defense, though it doesn’t appear in certain places. Enemies are also not as tough, and you get more time in Wait mode.

Not Open World

Valisthea, Final Fantasy 16’s world, is divided into six regions, and players will explore four large zones that are 2 kilometers by 2 kilometers in size throughout Clive’s journey. We’ve seen how some look and the large scale of levels, but despite that, Final Fantasy 16 isn’t open-world like Final Fantasy 15. Hilariously, Yoshida said Final Fantasy 16 could have been open world if they had a 15-year development period. To avoid releasing it in parts, the team chose to avoid that route.

Returning to Previous Areas

Despite not being an open-world game, Final Fantasy 16 does let you return to previously explored areas. In addition to completing any pending side quests, new quests will also open up, so you’re encouraged to return to previous areas. Final Fantasy 15 also lets you return to older areas, though there is a section where you’re locked into the narrative and a point of no return around the end. Whether Final Fantasy 16 has the same is unknown.

Only One Playable Character

When Final Fantasy 15 launched, you were stuck playing as Noctis and couldn’t switch between characters in battle. While an update would change this, letting players control Gladiolus, Prompto and Ignis, Final Fantasy 16 only has a single controllable character. Clive is joined by other party members, like Cidolfus and Jill, during his adventure, but you only control him throughout. Torgal also remains by his side and can be issued commands for healing and attacking in combat.

Eikons vs Summons

Instead of Summons, Final Fantasy 16 has Eikons. You still have all the classics, like Ramuh, Ifrit, Bahamut, Phoenix, Garuda, Odin, Typhon, etc, but they’re not summonable per se. Instead, they’re tied to various Dominants, who serve as their hosts and occupy positions of power in each region. Benedikta wields the power of Garuda, Dion controls Bahamut and so on. So you won’t be summoning them to your aid, at least based on what we currently know.

Eikonic Abilities

Somehow, Clive can wield powers from each Eikon. He can unleash homing lasers like Bahamut, a dimensional slash like Odin, launch enemies into the air with Phoenix’s flaming wing, and slice enemies multiple times with Garuda’s claws. In Final Fantasy 15, Noctis could call on Summons under different conditions, but that’s pretty much it. He still has various combat benefits available via the Ascension Tree, like phasing through enemy attacks with split-second guarding and breaking demon appendages with his Warp-Strike.

Eikon Battles

Final Fantasy 15 saw players battle Summons as Noctis, with unique set pieces like the battle with Titan remaining fresh. Final Fantasy 16 mixes things up in several ways. Not only will Clive fight against the Dominants, who utilize their Eikon’s powers in different ways, but also transform into Ifrit and go toe-to-toe with other Eikons in massive battles. These battles vary in unique ways, from shoot ’em-up sequences to wrestling matches, and have multiple sections. There are also times when Clive, in his human form, will fight against an Eikon, though these are likely one part of the larger Eikon battles.

Arcade Mode

When visiting Final Fantasy 16’s Hideaway, the central hub for Clive and friends, players can use the Arete Stone to access the Hall of Virtue to train. Final Fantasy 15 offered training at camps players set up, with party members available to fight against (and even guests like Aranea). However, Final Fantasy 16 also has an Arcade Mode, where you can replay previous stages and showcase your combat prowess to earn a high score. There are several levels of difficulty, including the highest level, which is “one of the hardest things that we want to challenge our high-end users to see how far they can get,” as per Takai. You can also check your scores against other players via global leaderboards.

Game Engine

Though it started development on Crystal Tools, Final Fantasy 15 shifted to the Luminous Engine, which would serve as the namesake of Luminous Productions and used to develop Forspoken. It had its share of issues, as anyone who played Forspoken will tell you, but the engine is built primarily for open-world titles.

Final Fantasy 16’s engine is somewhat of a mystery. Square Enix told YouTuber Skill Up in February that it wasn’t running on Luminous Engine or Unreal Engine. In an interview with WCCF Tech, Yoshida said it’s using an “engine we’ve created specifically for Final Fantasy 16.” Though it began development around the same time as Forspoken, he noted “there isn’t much sharing of technology between the Forspoken and Final Fantasy teams.” So again, not Luminous, but still a mystery.

Development

Final Fantasy 16 was revealed in September 2020, but development began long before that. Concept work started in 2015, and full production started in 2016. Game scenarios and other basic work wrapped by the end of 2020, and development entered the final stages in April 2022. It officially went gold on March 31st, almost three months before release. All in all, a long but rather smooth development period, even with Japan suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic multiple times over recent years.

By comparison, Final Fantasy 15’s development period is one long, confusing saga. It was originally announced as Final Fantasy Versus 13 in 2006 and meant to be exclusive to the PS3. Cue development hell and sporadic updates for the next six years when suddenly in 2012, Square Enix confirmed it was now Final Fantasy 15. Tetsuya Nomura was out as director, and Hajime Tabata of Type-0 fame was in, while the game was announced for Xbox One and PS4.

It took another four years before it was finally released in November 2016. That’s because when the name change happened, Versus 13 was cited to be about 20 to 25 percent and never really got off the ground. Overall, a long and painful wait for Final Fantasy fans.

PS5 Exclusive vs Multi-Platform

To go with its tumultuous development, Final Fantasy 15 went from a PS3 exclusive to a multi-platform release, launching on Xbox One and PS4 before eventually coming to PC. Final Fantasy 16 will launch for PS5 and remain exclusive to the platform for six months, per a PlayStation sizzle reel trailer from November 2022. Yes, the first reveal trailer did claim a PC release, and while Yoshida has expressed interest in the same somewhere down the line, this is a PS5 exclusive for now.

Playtime

Even before all the updates, Final Fantasy 15 was a big game at launch. According to HowLongtoBeat, it takes about 28.5 hours on average to beat the story, which goes up to 55 to 56 hours with side content. That’s not counting all the DLC or hours needed for a completionist run.

By comparison, Final Fantasy 16 focuses more on its main scenario, requiring about 35 to 40 hours to complete. However, delve into the optional side content, and you could spend around 70 hours in total, as per director Hiroshi Takai. Again, that should be higher when full completionist details are available, so keep that in mind.

It’s also worth noting that despite the extensive side content, there aren’t any hidden optional dungeons. Takai told IGN that some dungeons are “off the field, and you go deep down” but these connect to the story. He also considers them “expertly crafted dungeons.” “We created these as great places, we want players to go there and so we’re going to give reasons for players to go there. We didn’t want to create something that most players may not even find.”

New Game Plus

When you think of New Game Plus, it usually involves carrying over your levels, items, and skills to a brand new playthrough. Some story-tied content may not be accessible, but enemies are usually at higher levels and tougher. There’s also some new content to experience.

While it’s unknown if your skills and levels carry over, Final Fantasy 16 offers tougher enemies in New Game Plus. It also mixes things up by changing enemy placements and adding entirely new fights that aren’t available in the regular playthrough. So if you’re looking for a challenge, New Game Plus is the way to go.

By comparison, Final Fantasy 15’s New Game Plus lets you carry over levels, Gil, Ascension Progress, weapons, accessories, Regalia cosmetics, and more. However, enemies don’t scale, and can thus be utterly curb-stomped. This makes New Game Plus more suitable for those who want to re-experience the story while completing any side quests they may have skipped.

CYBERPUNK 2077

We’ll start with what’s become the poster child of rushed releases that could have benefitted massively from a delay- or another delay, in this case, because Cyberpunk 2077 was, of course, delayed more than a few times in the lead-up to its launch. The state the game released in was, frankly, unacceptable, not only in terms of the baffling lack of polish, but also the core gameplay itself feeling decidedly half-baked. With a couple more years in the oven, who knows? Maybe things could have turned out differently.

First announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus 13, the project went through years of development hell before director Hajime Tabata took over. It’s received a significant amount of updates and content post-launch like paid DLC, collaboration events, new features and even a multiplayer expansion called Comrades. The final paid DLC, Episode Ardyn, follows main antagonist Ardyn years before the base game’s story.

Currently, Luminous Productions is working on action RPG Forspoken which releases on October 11th for PS5 and PC. It sees Frey Holland transported from New York City to the realm of Athia and capable of wielding magic. Together with Cuff, a sentient bracelet, Frey explores the world and attempts to overthrow the tyrannical Tantas. For recent gameplay of the title, which reportedly has one second load times on PS5, head here.

https://twitter.com/FFXVJP/status/1526460689648214018

Keep in mind, however, that there will be spoilers ahead for every game we speak about in this feature, so if we begin talking about a game you don’t want spoiled, feel free to skip ahead to the next entry.

METAL GEAR SOLID 5

Not for the first time with Metal Gear Solid 5, Hideo Kojima claimed that he was making his final game in the series, and with that ultimately proving true, fans’ expectations grew to massive proportions. For a series as heavy on narrative and convoluted lore as Metal Gear Solid, wrapping up a long, complicated ark in a satisfying manner would be no easy task. On that front, MGS5 wasn’t exactly a resounding success, and even with issues such as its surprising lack of emphasis on storytelling to how many big questions it still left unanswered to even how many of its crucial narrative developments it relegated essentially to audio logs, the one scene that stuck out the most was where it’s revealed that Venom Snake, who you’ve been playing as the whole game, isn’t really Big Boss. Realizing that such a crucial part of the Big Boss’ story isn’t actually attributable to him but to a brainwashed clone was shocking, to say the least.

Final Fantasy 15 – Regalia Type F

While it’s fun to explore the world of Eos by casually driving around, you’ll want something faster and more convenient when the story is over. The Regalia Type F is the perfect answer – it’s unlocked by clearing three Imperial bases (the third base has a recommended level of 46 but it’s better to do it after finishing the story). Though it can’t be used for exploring the sea and needs a road to land on, this pseudo-airship is fast and doesn’t require fuel, which is a nice bonus.