I'm at a stage where the one two things I have to do in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth other than continuing on through my Hard Mode run (where I've just gotten to Cosmo Canyon) will require a patch to fix a bug (I've returned to the normal difficulty levels to clear out some Musclehead Coliseum fights and Chadley virtual encounters) because the sidequest "Can't Stop, Won't Stop" currently won't give you credit for beating the UPA's high score on G-Bike or whatever it's called. Square has evidently acknowledged this bug and are working on a fix, but for now rather than beat my head against the various mini-games that grant Dark Matter so that I can upgrade all the unique trinkets and thus max out my crafting skill to then allow me to make the Genji pieces, I've decided that I should probably get around to actually finishing Final Fantasy XVI.
But the contrast has not been kind to XVI.
It's remarkable to me how much XVI feels like a game from many years ago. While the character models and visual effects are great, the animation in dialogue scenes is really stiff. Compared with the NPCs (and player characters) in VII Rebirth, who have exaggerated, anime-like expressions and movements, I keep coming across scenes in which Clive is talking to some friendly merchant or community leader, and they're just locked off, his mouth flapping with what is genuinely a great vocal performance, but without the animation to match it.
The side quests in XVI are there to flesh out the world, often really reinforcing how brutal and rough that world is. And plot-wise, there's a high drama here to be sure. But there's really, really weird pacing. Seemingly every dialogue scene has a couple-second-long establishing shot showing the characters standing around before they get to the important task of... actually playing out the scene.
I guess what's funny to me about this is that, as a numbered entry in this legendary video game series, XVI feels like the side project compared to the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy. And I don't want to be insulting to the people who worked hard on XVI - clearly a lot of people put a ton of effort into building that world, designing the look of it, scoring it, writing the complex (if a little brooding and bleak) story. But you just get the sense that Square Enix really held their most experienced people in reserve to remake VII.
The VII remakes so far have been the most ambitious attempt to remake a video game I've ever encountered, and have honestly rejuvenated a love I have for JRPGs.
Naturally, XVI's biggest departure is that it has fully transitioned into being an action game. There are levels and stats, of course, but the progression systems are simpler than games like God of War that never pretended to be anything other than an action game (though I'd argue that at least the Norse-era God of War games are environmental puzzle games with combat interspersed - and I say this as a compliment).
Now, maybe I've just defaulted to builds that reinforce this, but I keep feeling like XVI lacks any real strategy when it comes to the combat - it's reflexive, making sure to dodge at the right time. But I basically just unload all of my special abilities in a rotation and by the time I've used them all I've usually got the first one I used back and ready to be used again.
By comparison, VIIR creates this beautiful melding of action-oriented combat (the ability to dodge and block attacks, having to think about positioning) with the command-sequence combat of the old turn-based system. (I know that you can create button commands for various abilities, but I think anyone who uses them is a philistine! You use that slow-down menu every time you're going to do a Focused Strike, mister!)
When I'm engaged in VIIR's combat, sure, there are patterns and rotations I'll use, but there's enough variety in enemies and how they interact with the characters that there are some real considerations to make - I think the way that lots of monsters have complicated things you have to do to pressure them, for example, really opens up design space for interesting monsters. And things like Synergy Abilities and Limit Breaks, along with limited MP, create trade-off strategic choices that make you consider your strategy in the thick of battle. Hell, just having to earn your ATB charges creates moments of choice - is saving the MP on casting Cura worth a second ATB charge to get a free Pray off? Sure, Barret's down pretty low (because he's been using Lifesaver) but Tifa's at like 75% and Cloud's fully topped off.
It's frustrating, because there's so much about XVI that should make it an amazing game. The Kaiju-style fights are cinematic and epic (though arguably some go on too long - is a 40-minute boss fight epic or just tedious?) and while the characters are a mixed bag, I really like Clive, and obviously Cid.
The return to medieval fantasy is... ok, I'll be honest, I don't really care for it. But it is an interesting change of pace.
It's interesting: I have mixed feelings about the number of minigames in Rebirth. The core gameplay of its combat system is satisfying enough that I found times when, for example, I was forced (maybe more accurately pushed) into playing a whole Queen's Blood tournament on a cruise ship, that I wished I could just get back to fighting monsters.
But returning to XVI, where there basically aren't any minigames whatsoever, it leaves the various side quests and much of the main quest feeling like the same stuff over and over. You cannot complain that Rebirth lacks variety.
I also think that Rebirth, and FFVII in general, has as perhaps its greatest strength a great party of adventurers that you just like to hang out with. As my roommate was playing the game earlier this evening, I was drawn to compare Rebirth in particular as being a "Hang-out Game" in the same way that a lot of sitcoms about people who just happen to be friends with one another (like Friends or How I Met Your Mother) are "Hang-out Sitcoms." Some people have complained (or worried, beforehand) that Rebirth is set in what is the least eventful stretch of the original FFVII. But in a strange way, I kind of feel like that's an asset. We get to hang out with this group of characters just being together in the world, their friendships developing, and seeing their opportunities to just be goofy and fun and, you know, get us to care about them.
It's not that Clive isn't likable as a protagonist. But even though he often travels with allies and friends over the course of FFXVI, there's never a real sense of a "party," because there isn't one. Gameplay-wise, we essentially never step outside of Clive's perspective, and we don't really get to see the world or its conflicts from a different point of view. And that, I think, also kind of shrinks down the rogue's gallery of the game into just a sequence of people to take down. The bad guys in XVI sort of bleed into one another, even if, upon close inspection, they do have contrary motivations (though I feel in particular that Barnabas wound up being kind of forgettable after a lot of build-up).
Naturally, VII's all building to the final confrontation with Sephiroth, but the lesser villains come into focus in different ways, not just because they have their own aesthetics and techniques, but also because different characters have different histories with them - Barret has a particular reason to take down Scarlett, for example, while Red XIII and Aerith would naturally care more about defeating Hojo.
And this is a matter of taste, of course (though this is all taste - I'm sure some people like the simpler action gameplay) but I really miss the silly bullshit. A character like Roche, for example, and the fantastic exchange of "Oh, that jackass? He's... a jackass." "We know, sir!" talking about him. And yet, even Roche has his own little arc and nuance - he's a crazy jackass, but he's also got this kind of chivalric sense of honor, and ultimately has this kind of tragic fate.
Anyway, even though it's a remake, I can imagine that a decade from now I'll be looking back nostalgically on this project and all the amazing things that were accomplished in it, but I seriously doubt that I'll still be giving much thought to XVI.
And that's a bit of a bummer, isn't it? I mean, getting a really good remake of a beloved game is something that gamers often want and very, very seldom get. No one could possibly accuse Square Enix of half-assing their re-creation of Final Fantasy VII. But much as I love that this has allowed me to get on a bandwagon that felt like it left me behind when I was eleven years old back in 1997, it feels like it would be better if it was the brand-new entry in the series that brought with it the expert craftsmanship and stunning gameplay.
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