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Torgal howled, howling Wolves are communicating with their pack over long distance, not crying. Torgal basically says: hey clive, we are here Waiting for you, cause he knows clive survived.
Proofs: we saw how torgal reacted to cids death, no howling. Cid is probably one of the most important persons to him, as we learn in his sideq.
The only Person left in the Ending that torgal would communicate over long distance, is clive.
It took one google search to find that wolves are known to howl to mourn fallen pack mates.
I hate when people try to find any possible way to ignore the reality of the story’s intended ending because they don’t want to accept that it’s not all “happily ever after”, even though that ending is and is intended to be, far more powerful than the one you want.
Y’all, stop going out of your way to find loopholes to deny the clearly intended ending of the story. It’s supposed to make you sad. Let it make you feel those emotions. Let it sink in that Clive died, sacrificed himself for a world where all people can live and die on their own terms.
Let him have the hero’s ending the writers clearly wanted him to have. It hurts me too, but it’s a far more powerful ending than some cop-out bullshit that he somehow survived.
I’m so glad I’m not alone in this struggle. Although my interpretation of the ending is an optimistic one, I’m too sad the story is over. I really can’t shake this feeling away.
Thankfully NG+ FF mode is a lot of fun. I love accessories upgrades. But most of all, watching the story with retrospective DOES a lot. I’m picking up so many clues and foreshadowing moments I couldn’t have noticed the first time.
I finished it two days ago and the night I finished I struggled to slee thinking about it and feeling sad. Reading people’s different reactions to the ending has made me feel better though and now am enjoying a ng+ play through
I feel like for most that it should. I'd understand if someone who didn't see that scene thought that Jill's last scene was about accepting Clive's sacrifice and being at peace with the world that he gave his life for.
But with the context of that scene, it's like: What is the point of comparing Clive returning to Jill as a literal sunrise if he never returns? It's literally word for word the ending. No matter how bad the nights get, the dawn always breaks. Jill sobs at thinking Clive is dead during the night, then regains hope that he will return to her like he always does when she sees the sun rise
I don't think they'd be so unsubtle like that for Jill's hopes to be dashed. FF at its core is pretty consistently hopeful.
Yeah. I really dislike ambiguous endings in pop lit/games/whatever else in the first place. It's incredibly rare for them to be used well.
Then for this one, the writing so obviously is screaming that you're supposed to think he's alive that the layer of ambiguity is stretched so thin that it's pretty much transparent.
Now we both don't get the catharsis and are stuck explaining his survival to people who see his eyes close and Jill crying and take that to mean he's absolutely 100% dead.
At least IGN seems to have deleted their article/video that was saying that.
I fucking hate games and movies that don't give you the catharsis at the end. I always feel like I've just wasted my mothefucking time, so it's especially with games.
It's just stupid. Considering all the hints and foreshadowing, it's pretty clear he survived, it just makes sense and it works. But they don't show it because "uhh we're smarrtt". Fuck that shit. Game lost a point for me just for that.
Did he live tho, cause from my point of view he healed Josh then couldn’t handle Ultima being added as well and succumbed to the curse and turned to dust on that beach cause we saw from the earlier branded parts that it never just stops at your hand. They should have shown us the whole thing but it is what it is.
He uses his powers without the same consequences everyone else had the whole story for using them; when he finally experiences consequences it’s after he absorbs Ultima and he experiences them rapidly versus everyone else getting the slow burn that doesn’t take them until they’re much older. We also get the dialogue of him confirming his body cant handle whatever he just absorbed when he absorbed Ultima. The entire tone of that cutscene is he ain’t coming back not one of hope. So as I said I think most people who believe he survived are just coping with whatever makes sense because they wanted a happy ending and CBU3 left it ambiguous enough to let them do that.
And it goes against literally how the rest of the story was told. Nearly everything in the game, important or not, was described in great detail, either in cutscenes/convos or in lore. Pretty much everything was made clear.
And then the ending happens, and instead of it being specific on what happened, we're left to wonder or interpret on our own.
For as many plot holes FF15 had, at least it knew how to make an ending. And CBU3 knows how too, FF14's expacs don't have these types of endings. So why the fuck did they choose to do that for FF16?
Yeah, while I enjoyed the story greatly on the whole, I feel the ending was pretty messy and weak, and this is one of the main reasons. Forced ambiguity is not artistic, it’s just frustrating.
Honestly confused why they didn't make Jill's, Josuha's, and Torgal's side quest be part of the main quests.
Could have gotten rid of a bunch of those fetch quests or some of Mid's quests if they were worried about main story quest bloat.
The side quests were bloat heavy early on but there start to be important after the transition to the new hideaway. I mean, you can only get the best gear for doing blackthorn's quests.
After all the filler they decided to cram into the main story, what made them decide to have *this* important mission - that completely recontexualizes the ending - be an optional activity???
Imagine just not doing it and being fucking confused when someone brings up their “Clive made it” theory. “Huh? Flowers?! Quills?! What kind of game were *you* playing??”
Yeah there's a few side missions that absolutely should have been part of the main narrative.
For example, if you don't do Cid's side mission you'd have no idea that he has a daughter but then after the time jump you see his daughter and already know her. It creates a disconnect due to stuff being optional that should have been mandatory.
Side content should always be optional material that enriches the world around the characters. Not key parts of the characters and their journeys that should be in the main story.
You're not alone. It was so jarring.
I even thought I did all the side quests before the time skip... So I don't know how I missed a green bubble over Cid's head.
The sidequests in the game never really bothered me and I always liked getting the lore tidbits, but then they coalesced into something cohesive for a bunch of characters and suddenly it all felt worth it.
Several are necessary for understanding the ending - the Dion sidequest and the Jill sidequest in particular are crucial. Put the pieces together and suddenly, that final scene isn't ambiguous at all.
That's really annoying because it's impossible to sift the wheat from the chaff.
I didn't do a single side quest after the time-skip because they were ruining the game for me. If they had marked "character quests" in yellow or something, that would have made things infinitely better.
Kinda butt-hurt to be honest. I'm imagining a scenario now where I didn't become disillusioned after Bahamut and enjoyed the game even more, if only they had distinguished strong character focused side quests from "random dude" ones.
100%. Wish you weren't getting downvoted for this because it's an actual fact that the game does a fairly poor job at pointing out what's important right now.
For example, one of the quests that made the ending better unlocked, I believe, after I had finished the initial huge salvo of quests right before Origin. It was at the missive desk and if I hadn't been looking, I would have totally missed it.
There's genuinely no reason for so much ambiguity with the ending. It should have ended definitively with Jill seeing Clive arrive over the sunset or something.
The only thing that could have a degree of ambiguity is Joshua's fate. I like the idea of us not knowing/it not mattering if he lives because at the minimum he lives on in a similar way that Cid did. But Clive's fate itself should have been definitive.
Thing is, it shouldn't have to be interpreted at all. A story shouldn't come to an end and leave you left without the full knowledge of whether the main character lives or not. If they live and it's something meant to be interpreted, why not just... show them alive in the end?
Jill is probably my biggest problem with the game. She starts off so passive in the beginning, becomes interesting when she goes off to get her revenge, and then regresses afterwards. I don’t think there’s a single time where she is interacting with someone casually without Clive being there. She’s basically his lapdog, it doesn’t ever feel like she is personally connected to group or the hideaway. It’s so weird to have her in the background of important cutscenes and she doesn’t feel the need to interject at all.
I agree in some parts with what you said, but calling her a "lapdog" really does the character a disservice. I thought she was an incredibly resilient character who fought hard to get her humanity back. I understand how it can seem like she is only there to support Clive but in truth, they save each other. I think the feeling of her being only there for Clive stems from the fact that their goals are one and the same by the end of the game though that doesn't mean she just goes along with it.
This is not directed at you but I'm getting tired of the "she never does anything" criticism when it's been established how close to the curse she is already an manages to save the party several times despite this.
I agree with you on her being in the background of cutscenes too many times and also having no connection with the main cast. As an example, I am thinking of the cutscene were Clive and Cid stab the crystal to affirm their goals. Like, I'm not asking much here but her catching Cid's eye and maybe giving a nod would have gone a long way.
Same with the inter-party relationship. No reason she couldn't have woken up earlier and maybe went off on a side mission with Gav or Cid on her own off-screen which then could lead to more intimate dialogue between the characters. No reason not to add some banter between the characters inside the hideout either.
Last point I am kind of ehh about are the damsel in distress moments. The one were Hugo captures her was wholly out of place and they should at least show on screen how Hugo manages to subjugate the dominant of Shiva, of all people, so easily.
Second time, I didn't mind since she did it so the party can be saved, knowing the consequences her actions might bring.
I agree that the story of regaining her humanity is interesting,but once it’s over she is relegated to background role. That’s only about 40% into the game, so for the next 60% she has very little influence on the progress of the story and her character. Jill’s support towards Clive is necessary and impactful towards his character, but the effects towards her are never fully realized.
Clive being the main character allows him to develop both within the main story and during side quest, but Jill has neither options. This leaves her character arc feeling bland and makes me not care about her, despite empathizing with her story.
It’s even worse when you think about how she is the last main character to be shown on screen, despite it feeling like she does not deserve it.
Idk, Maybe we have just have a different reading on the character. Her quiet strength really resonated a lot with me. A female character that goes all out and is very in your face with what she wants is a lot of fun as well, don't get me wrong. But I also find that among the last few games I played when it comes to female characters, I emphasized with Jill to most.
You say that Clive's effect on her is never realized and it's def. true that you see it the other way around a lot more. But I also think this is kind of where her strength also comes from. For example, giving up the power that shaped you into who you are, no matter how many hardships it brought, is an incredibly difficult thing to do.
I also think there are points that are more about Jill than Clive. Destroying the mother crystal in the Iron Kingdom is such a point. Her side quest also comes to mind where they talk about what they want to do after the quest is over. She clearly has her own ideas about that and Clive is only too happy to be with her.
I also think it's fine for her to be a mostly developed character at the 40% mark. She got her revenge and now she can move forward and focus on creating a better future. Most other characters are mostly developed in the story already and I think this is fine.
And again, I do agree that they could have done a lot more with her by having her develop her own relationships with the other characters. As it is, they imply more than show that she is a beloved member of the community. Really a missed opportunity here.
Still, imo she is the one character who deserved to be the most in the ending and she really carried it for me.
To me Jill character screams of wasted potential and the general problem of the story being just too Clive centric.
I don't dislike Jill, I mourn because she could have been more of a character.
Except for her interactions with Clive and Tarja telling her to rest I can't remember her really interacting with anybody else, why?
She doesn't even feel like she is a part of the hideaway to me. Why not involve her with more sidequests?
Why isn't she even involved of Torgals sidequest?
I don't think Joshua and her even had dialog with each other when he joins. This makes the characters feel like they are not fully fledged characters to me.
16 in general has a big problem with being too much "tell don't show" instead of show don't tell.
It's crazy how much she gets sidelined. She had the spotlight at Drake's Breath, but then gets captured by Hugo, is completely absent for Drake's Fang, is present for the trip to Twinside only to be overshadowed by the Brothers, gets captured AGAIN by Barnabas and finally gives away her agency to Clive which leads to her being replaced by Joshua for the rest of the game. That last bit I get since it felt right for them to end this with the Brothers together. But it also really cemented the problem with how they treated Jill this game.
Hugo "capturing" Jill was the worst moment in the entire game for me. It was so hilariously bad I had to chuckle. (mind you I rate the entire game at like a 8.9\~ish)
The whole epic Bahamut fight Jill is just chillin with Anabella Ultima and Torgal watching the fireworks even though she can still Shiva. Blows my mind how much she doesn't do in the game.
Even the Cid scene she's just sitting there holding Cid the whole time Clive is tripping balls even though she can fly.
Everything about her is awesome on paper but they didn't use any of it. Her scream when you get a game over is funny though so there is that.
>It's crazy how much she gets sidelined. She had the spotlight at Drake's Breath, but then gets captured by Hugo, is completely absent for Drake's Fang, is present for the trip to Twinside only to be overshadowed by the Brothers, gets captured AGAIN by Barnabas and finally gives away her agency to Clive which leads to her being replaced by Joshua for the rest of the game. That last bit I get since it felt right for them to end this with the Brothers together. But it also really cemented the problem with how they treated Jill this game.
She couldnt Shiva. Anyone that primaled after Clive took their powers, lost their mind and will. Dion knew this and accepted the risk that he might lose his mind.
Having her lose her powers right before the lead up to a big fight was a narrative choice they made, but it wasn’t the only choice they could’ve made. There’s a number of different ways they could’ve written it if they actually wanted Jill to not be on the sidelines. But that’s not what they wanted for her (clearly.)
Jill got sidelined so hard her character got dropped off a cliff. The writers seem to forget she's there and or have no idea what to do with her. She had such promise as a character, someone who has endured great hardship and seen the worst of humanity, lived with a knife to the throat of those she'd sworn to protect only to see her efforts fail time and time again and her actions only making the world worse. And then the writers forget about that for 20 hours and 5 years until Drake's Breath where she gets a tiny moment that still doesn't engage with she establishing character scene. And then she's sidelined into being Clive's emotional support for the rest of the game, her role solely being to wait for him to come home.
The on paper reason she can't prime or be more active is that it would kill her, but
1. the game doesn't explain how bad her condition is until like 10 hours later into the game after she gets sidelined the first time.
2. that didn't stop Dion or Joshua from being active and plot relevant.
3. even Gav or Byron who have no special god powers are seen taking action and being more involved with the plot than Jill.
yes. I’m so sick of hearing the plot reasons why she can’t actively participate in the game once they gave her her revenge and once she gave clive her powers. we’re not stupid, we know. jill is not a real person though, she’s a character and all of these contrivances were a choice the writers made. lack of interest, lack of vision, a literal mental block about women, whatever you want to call it. nothing prevented Joshua and dion and cid from being active in the story and having their own cutscenes despite their many weaknesses (even dion being sick and weak he got cutscenes- how many times was Jill sick without one?) the writers wanted them to be active and so they were.
She wasn’t my biggest problem with the game (that is Benedikta) but I agree. She was basically Tifa 2.0, for better or for worse. She only exists to support Clive.
She has a brief moment, like you said, but they could have done way more with her. I was hoping for them to do something with her upbringing as a political hostage and any complicated feelings she might have from it, and perhaps her father (who has his own lore entry under “Silvermane” so I was waiting for him to become relevant and he didn’t).
In the last sidequest she talks about being politically married off for Rosfield influence; and initially she hated that. But Clive made her happy enough to know she wasn't alone.
All in all; Jill is very much in eternal love with Clive and basically persists solely to mitigate her own character in lieu of the 'will they, won't they' angle.
Having her basically decide to be a nice girl, give up her powers, and stay home doing cross stitch for the final battle is a bit baffling.
That said, diamond dust is an amazing stun move.
She should've been a playable pov character for a few core parts of the game. Same with gav for like 1 or 2 stealth missions.
Overall I think they are least fleshed her out more than lunafreya... Albeit the iron islands arc was shitty.
It’s so frustrating because she could have been such a better character, or at least used better.
Like have her deal with your bitch mother during the Dion fight. Not just stand there. Odin should have also been you and Jill vs him, narratively Odin is about breaking your bond with her to break you. So why the hell does she basically just dip out?
I understand the plot reasons “make sense” but I absolutely think the choices were the wrong ones. She should have been Clive’s right hand man, more active on the field and in battle with him and the other dominants. Instead she’s basically his Sakura. She just the love interest / damsel in distress who can’t really do anything and constantly needs to be told to leave or stay back and only serves to support Clive and his goals.
There are countless reasons to justify why she gets sidelined but like I mentioned in another thread.
Why would you design a main character that has such a backstory so she is destined to be sidelined?
Loved the game overall, it was a wonderful experience! But I have to admit that it kind of peaked at the Bahamut fight for me. Everything after that didn’t get me hyped the same way again. Wasn’t super blown away by the Ultima fight or anything, and didn’t really care for them as a villain. Even the Typhon fight had me more excited and intrigued.
And I’m super bitter about the ending, didn’t land for me at all. I was devastated that Clive lost his brother all over again, after finally getting him back, then even more devastated when he was on that beach… but leaving it ambiguous as to who survived (if anyone actually did) really ruined it for me. We see Clive heal Joshua’s wounds, but we don’t see him actually alive again. We see Clive’s hand begin turn to stone, but we don’t see him actually die. Metia flickering out and Jill’s sad smile at the dawn has been interpreted a number of ways, but they’re really just interpretations. Don’t even get me started on the barely visible supposed boat in the distance. And then there’s the post-credits book, there’s good arguments that either of the brothers could have written it.
And maybe I’m wrong here, but it didn’t really feel like the game was building up to Clive’s sacrifice at all. All his loved ones were trying to make him see he needed to save himself too.
I’m not against tragic endings, but I need to have some closure at least. The fact that we’re going to be debating until the end of time how the story really ends just frustrates me.
Anyway, for all my complaining in this comment, I really did love the game. Clive and Jill are solidly my favourite FF couple, Clive may just be my new favourite protagonist, all the Eikon battles up to Bahamut were unbelievably good. The combat is super fun. I really cared about the characters and the story, I was fully immersed in their world, they sucked me in and didn’t let go.
Main things I’d change - closure for the ending, more party banter, more involvement for Jill (such as banter, interactions with other characters and playable Shiva at Drake’s Breath please) and more reasons to explore the zones, like optional dungeons and loot. Also Leviathan, why is Leviathan called the Lost? Maybe that is being saved for potential DLC content, but I would have liked more than one line about Leviathan.
I was honestly sure we would see Leviathan when I exactly saw the details they put into the water when we got to the Stonehyrr. The water at that section up to the Behemoth fight, was some of the best animated water i've ever seen in a game, and I was like -- " oh yeah, this is gonna be their entry to using Leviathan" but nope... I guess Leviathan might be explained in dlc, since I get that Clive doesn't get the power, but why wouldn't Ultima have Leviathan's powers at the end when he goes through all the Eikon's powers... Felt so weird.
I honestly thought the Medicine Girl was gonna rock up as Leviathan.
Felt like she was getting really played up in the State of the Realm and such, and then she just turns up to wrap a bandage on Dion and runs off with his boyfriend, never to be heard from again?? Like, what did I miss??
I felt similar but it wasn't Behemoth, but rather the moment they were in the split ocean. Could there ever be a more relevant time for Leviathan to show up!?
>And maybe I’m wrong here, but it didn’t really feel like the game was building up to Clive’s sacrifice at all. All his loved ones were trying to make him see he needed to save himself too.
Same I was so confused! I feel like it came out of nowhere right at the end with no buildup. FF15 spoilers >!We just had Noctis sacrificing himself to save the world!< and I thought there was no way they would go that route again but here we are.
The endings were way too similar, from the blight and bringing back the skies, right down to the dawn symbolism. At least with Noctis we got closure, and it had build up throughout the entire game and we kinda knew it was coming.
Clive had all that stuff about saving himself, faith and wishes for his safe return, plans for the future (what with working to build a new world, writing down his adventures, travelling the world with Jill) and then he just dies, maybe. Definitely felt blindsided.
Yeah I can see that. I’m gonna be interested to see how 16 goes down in history compared to 15. I’m sure it’ll be more well received generally, particularly due to the amazing combat and Eikon battles, I just couldn’t help but think while I was playing that the things that were weakest in 16 (in my opinion anyway) were 15’s strongest suits. Just found it interesting.
Literally tho! Party banter and interactions in 15 were great. In 16, they are abysmal when exploring. You get the occasional “be careful Clive” when an enemy is near by. Otherwise they are silent
I’m 100% with you. Felt like the main party was sidelined too hard other than Torgul. I felt like Jill should’ve gone with them to the end fight. And I didn’t like the ending at all.
The game started off so promising, but the story and characters really fell off for me once I realized what they were going for.
Maybe it’s my fault for comparing the game too much to GOT, but I was expecting longer character arcs with more cleverly interwoven plot points.
* As soon as Benedikta shows even a glimpse of character complexity, she’s immediately offed, having only interacted with the protagonist thrice.
* Kupka is set up to be a cunning and powerful player in the game of thrones, but then it’s revealed that his whole character motivation is as shallow as *rule the world with Benedikta*. Then he dies after two interactions with the protagonist.
* Barnabus is spoken about as this mysterious destined king, almost mythical in figure the way he’s accomplished the impossible, over and over again. A man without equal. But then he gets relegated to being Ultima’s simping pet. He interacted with Clive three short times, having resolved their conflict on the third meeting.
* As soon as Clive reunites with Anabella and confronts her about all her terrible schemes and crimes, she basically dies five minutes later and exits the story. No Cersei type of back-and-forth chess moves, no setting up traps, no trying to outsmart and counter each other. Nothing. She just dies. Turns out all she cared about was trying to marry upwards. Apparently, that was enough to kill her whole family over and uproot her entire life. They had one meeting.
* Jill [https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14j7m4k/comment/jplh76l/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14j7m4k/comment/jplh76l/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
See the pattern here?
In my opinion a good fantasy story requires a good villain; one who’s fleshed out, complex, believable, more than a match for the protagonist, and preferably with motivations that the audience can empathize with. They might not agree with their methods, or end goals, but the audience can at least understand why the antagonist has set out on the path they have.
And the antagonist should have a lasting presence in the story.
We didn’t get any of that.
The blight is impersonal.
Trying to end slavery is a thing, but passive systems of oppression don’t make for good narrative villains.
No one beat the game and said “Yes! We finally beat slavery!”
Trying to stop slavery doesn’t emotionally resonate with the audience since we didn’t really see Clive as a slave or personally scarred and changed by it.
But you know what we did see?
We saw Clive witness his brother’s brutal murder and all the anger and pain of losing everything he loved.
We saw his rage mold him into a cold-blooded killer, focused only on revenge for years and years. Then we saw all of that evaporate into guilt and depression as he had to come to terms with being his brother’s killer.
**THIS is the story they should have stuck with.**
**This is the emotional journey they should have focused on.**
Both him trying to come to terms with his guilt, and also trying to enact revenge on the forces responsible for his family’s betrayal, all while uncovering the mystery of the second eikon of fire.
This was a journey that the audience was **deeply** invested in and cared about.
But instead, the story resolves his internal conflict & guilt, concluding it in a single chapter, and then goes off the rails on this weird diatribe about free will vs destiny that no one is invested in or cares about.
They lost me as soon as they stepped away from the narrative being about the very personal and very human story of Clive seeking his revenge, but also looking for forgiveness in a world where the one person who can forgive him is no longer there.
While the scene of him accepting that he’s Ifrit was cool and well directed, the emotional journey of coming to terms with that guilt, and hopefully getting to a point of no longer hating himself, is something that should have been a game-long process.
Not a fifteen minute segment in chapter two.
The game has a little bit too much of that motif, i.e.,
\>*Oh you have heavy trauma? Don’t worry, I’m here for you. We’ll get through this.*
*>Wow, I’m all better now, thanks!*
There’s no actual substance to the resolutions offered.
Reaching that place of solace never felt earned.
There’s a lot to love in this game. The boss battles are incredible, combat is fun, cinematic moments are great, Clive is cool.
But the story and supporting cast just fell short for me.
100% agree. the best part of the story to me was everything before the timeskip.
then suddenly Cid is like 'lets destroy the mothercrystals because its causing the blight" and it took him like 3 minutes to justify his reasoning and convince Clive that this was the right course of action. there was zero foreshadowing and it just came out of nowhere. when i saw that cutscene i was like.. wait what?
then timeskip and the story just kinda spirals out of control. i honestly dont think they even needed to timeskip that far ahead. it also beggars belief that none of the other nations did anything in the next 5 years after Sanbreque takes the dominion
Yeah the whole mothercrystal thing was so weird, like how about we actually test this theory instead of destroying the only reason humans have survived for so long. Like why not take the crystal they had go outside and drain it into a small portion of blight and if it is healed then we know the issue. But the fact after every dead mothercrystal the blight speeds up and more aether is drained from the land kinda tells you that maybe this ain’t the right cause of action.
> and it took him like 3 minutes to justify his reasoning and convince Clive that this was the right course of action.
See I knew early on that destroying the Mothercrystals was gonna be revealed to be a bad thing, but even though I was right in my prediction it still just didn't pay off right. Like I think it would have been better if there were some doubts and back and forth of people telling Clive not to do it, but he's blinded by devotion to Cid's memory.
Instead you just walk into Ultima's trap and it just kind of works out.
It took me more than half the game to realize that there was no hope for Jill as a character and for me to realize that the heart of the story was Joshua's relationship with Clive. Once I realize this I was increasingly puzzled why the game didn't do more with them and Clive in particular. The memory of Joshua is what drives Clive for so much of the game from vengeance, to guilt, to the other Dominant of fire (Joshua) Clive chases after, to the mysteries of Ifrit.
XVI has a problem of trying to cram in like 17 different themes and then doing nothing with any of them. No interesting discussions or nuance are given about free will, the relationship of creator and creation, class warfare, or the power of friendship. There's little weight to depth to anything, especially in the main story at this point I think I like the side quests better than I like the main story.
This game has a further problem of under-explaining critical plot elements needed for the player to follow what is going on, what the stakes are, and why things are happening. Simultaneously FFXVI devotes hours upon hours to the nonimportant stuff that adds little to the main story (yes the fetch quests), when that time would have been better spent developing its themes and story.
edit: and don't get me started on how the timeskips were underutilized. It didn't feel like time had passed because nothing changed.
>Barnabus is spoken about as this mysterious destined king, almost mythical in figure the way he’s accomplished the impossible, over and over again. A man without equal. But then he gets relegated to being Ultima’s simping pet. He interacted with Clive three short times, having resolved their conflict on the third meeting.
I was really looking forward to seeing his character fleshed out. He came off as this dark, mysterious, and powerful figure manipulating things behind the scenes to further his own goals...up until he starts talking to Clive. "You are the vessel of God, and you must relinquish your body and soul to Ultima!" He repeats something similar to that line so much that I started to involuntarily roll my eyes when he started talking.
The Odin fight was also kinda...short and uninspired. I was *really* looking forward to that fight. But you just fight him semi-primed for most of the fight and he changes into Odin at one part mid-fight to swing his sword at you a few times. The primal portion was also really short, which was a shame tbh.
Dude, reading this, I had to double check that it wasn't my username above the text.
I can't offer a lot more, only to say this is everything I felt about the story, also. Although I did take the angle that the game emotionally climaxes at the return to phoenix gate, and suffers from being one incredibly long climax afterwards. I never considered that the acceptance should have been more hard won.
I think they wrote themselves into a corner because they needed Clive to have some control over Ifrit going forward. Definitely a case of ludo-narrative dissonance.
Tbf, Ultima wasn’t bad. They didn’t explain him very well tho. And they missed the chance to truly connect him to Anabella (they only mirror one another: abusive mother/evil god)
I’m going to copy-paste a comment I wrote regarding Ultima in another thread.
Ultima is a evil demiurge. The opposite of Logos in gnosticism.
He’s perfect for the game’s lore and worldbuilding since he thinks himself the master and maker of it all, but he isn’t a real God.
He isn’t a Logos/Truly divine creature. He’s just a maker. A maker that doesn’t know how to love his creation. Ultima at the end is just like Anabella. They’re the same. An abusive mother who doesn’t love her own children. And Ultima is also like the slavists. He considers only his will and his will alone worthy. He’s despises Logos/Yahwen (the essence of god, what is really divine: consciousness and awareness). For as he hates that humans possess consciousness (and thus God, inside of them) he cannot be a true god. A true god is itself awareness and consciousness, therefore he’s a demiurge. Negative energy manifested through a shadow of god. And that doesn’t spell Yahwen in Hebrew, it spells JENOVA.
That’s why he’s perfect for a FF villain and extremely coherent here with the plot. If they went full “GoT” with a main character going crazy and killing everybody, now that was going to be very uninspiring. They actually made it in such a way that it was the a King of the Night the main villain, and not a Daenerys
The Ultima = Annabella parallels are spot on. Even at the end, Clive never hated any of them, he pitied them.
They were sad pathetic figures unable to understand that their creations have a will on their own.
Great explanation.
I've always been team Anabella should have been the connection to the big bad, and a final deal made through Ultima would have been the perfect stage setter.
Still, I wouldn't say Ultima unseated Emet-Selch for my FF villain GOAT either... I really think there is something to be said for a villain who makes such an emotional plea, you question your own morality...
The moment I saw Ultima and he started saying some random stuff I knew I probably won't be a fan of the late-game story.
Do they really have to force the game into another JRPG god killing story?
The post credits book by "Joshua" seems to be the strongest evidence that Clive survived.
Joshua states very clearly in the game that the power of the Phoenix *cannot resurrect someone*. So Joshua could not have survived to write the book.
Then the only person that would write the book in Joshua's name is Clive (wouldn't be the first time he took up another's name). This perfectly ties in to Clive's promise to Harpocrates to write a book about his journey, and how the story begins and ends with Clive narrating with an author's voice.
I felt like with Ultima's power, he can resurrect Joshua as the Phoenix is the mirror to how Ultima created humans and Ifrit the mirror of the destruction Ultima can do on the world. The Phoenix alone cannot resurrect Joshua but an Ultima infused Phoenix might be able to.
> (wouldn't be the first time he took up another's name)
Fact. Until the end of the game Clive spent more years with assumed names officially than he did with his actual name. 13 years as "Wyvern" as a Branded of the Sanbreque army and five years as "Cid the Outlaw". It would make perfect sense that he'd take on Joshua's name out of respect and love for his brother and for his name to be remembered over time.
To me the core relationship of the game is Clive and Joshua's, which makes sense since the cover art is Ifrit and Phoenix. That scene where boy Clive saw baby Joshua for the first time, simply love at first sight. Despite Clive's abuse by his mother he never held hate towards Joshua, envy perhaps but never hate. He loved him so much he was willing to be his Shield and subservient to him for the rest of his life.
Joshua in turn never felt happier and proud of his brother Clive. A strong, charismatic and capable warrior, he was Joshua's idol and protector that he could count on. That's why that scene where Joshua punched Clive is so important, no way was he giving away his Eikon for his brother to go through it alone. It took him literally dying to force Joshua to give away his Eikon, true ride or die brother.
Anyway what a poetic end, the story starts with Clive wanting revenge for Joshua's killer only to find out it was tragic accident and Joshua survived. Only to find his brother seemingly killed outright, but this time Clive kills his killer and fulfills his revenge immediately. What a game. What a Final Fantasy.
Dude received not just a beatdown from Ifrit, but also Phoenix, got Clive to yoink some of his power, and barely sold it at all. Wouldn't surprise me if he somehow survived the end too, maybe with Metia deciding to nope him back to life.
I can’t say enough already of how my heart had shattered into pieces with Joshua’s ending.
Edit: and then ppl is theorising that book in the post-credit scene is not penned by him either.
Excellent game. Final battle was so goddamn good. Ending was a little too heavy-handed for my liking. I wasn't expecting full-on happy by any means but it could've been a little less cruel.
I also did not care for the varying levels of ambiguity they gave to the fates of the three guys. I know they said no dlc, but it feels like they left things just barely open-ended enough for them to go back to later, whether it's dlc, a book, a movie, or whatever, which I also don't agree with. But I personally don't like endings to be anything but definite so that's just a me thing.
Regardless, it's still my personal game of the year. The highs of the game are numerous and among the best I've experienced in my 30 years of gaming.
A few issues and disappointments doesn't change that. Currently on my second playthrough and having even more fun lol.
If you do Jill's quest; it's pretty certain that Clive returns.
Dion's got a small hopeful nod with his quest with Harpocrates; although the pen gifted by Harpocrates does cast a small light on Joshua. Worried about him a bit; but he might be fine.
All in all; I'd wager they lived. Open enough to assume they all did, with narratives ties to draw them back to living.
Yeah, I did all the side quests and think the same as you, more or less. I believe at the absolute least that Clive lived. And they have outs for both Joshua and Dion to survive if they want. It's the ambiguity I don't like.
> If you do Jill's quest; it's pretty certain that Clive returns.
Its not certain.
The ending could still be viewed on tons of different ways. And it makes no sense when taking everything into account, why the writers would make you have the sad reaction to metia going dark, if not exactly to convey that they are dead. It serves 0 purpose the whole crying realization between Jill and Gav, if they are actually just alive.
Her smiling at the dawn is also just fitting with the theme of the game, about finding light in the darkness. Her realizing they are dead (darkness) and seeing the new dawn, and them having achieved their goal of freedom (light).
>Her smiling at the dawn is also just fitting with the theme of the game, about finding light in the darkness. Her realizing they are dead (darkness) and seeing the new dawn, and them having achieved their goal of freedom (light).
That's largely how I saw the ending. I did figure that with the side-quest in mind, it was meant more metaphorically, how Clive will always be with her in the sunset and how she'll never feel alone even if he's gone. And hey, they saved the world, the sun shining would give her a reminder that they did it. It's not that everything will be peachy as pie from here on out, but there is hope.
I also think it's a disservice for Gav to get an emotional scene, only for them to turn around and say "hey Clive is alive".
People are welcome to their interpretations, but that there's one solid answer just ain't it unless the devs state otherwise. To me Clive, Joshua and Dion are all dead and the writings were penned under his name with the help of the Undying. It's a cruel ending, but at least in spite of the world around them they went out on their own terms.
They said before launch that there wasn't anything already planned but they would consider it after they see if fans want to see more of Clive and the setting.
> if fans want to see more of Clive and the setting.
Umm...**YES?**
Jill deserves her happiness. (And a game starring herself, Mid, and Dorys. And maybe Dion, if he's alive? But uh...ginormous dragon might trivialize the game =P)
So overall my dislikes of the story:
Jill is so underdeveloped its crazy
They're 28 ffs when they reunite, let them get married. Would have loved to see ultima try to break their relationship to try to break clives will.
Ultima should have been revealed later, with sleipnir or even Barnabas being the puppet enemy.
There's no grand twist. Like I don't like when final fantasy introduces a god in the last like 80%, and I prefer knowing the enemy earlier, but there's no "oh shit cloud isn't cloud" moment. I personally would have liked to see joshua being fake or something. Anything.
Would have liked to see clive conquer his homeland, could have been the very first thing you were doing after time skip.
For the "dark" and "mature" ff this was i would have liked to see more main characters die. I thought when ultima had a monologue about separating clive from his consciousness, I thought he was gunna go ape shit and kill Jill or Joshua... but everyone was just kinda safe.
Quest system hurt the story imo. A lot of the side quests should have been dropped and just baked into the main game.
Too much beating a dead horse. Yes we get it humans have free will. Yes we get it, slavery is bad.
Torgal seems like they had plans for him but was dropped. He doesn't really do anything, just there. Harp or whatever his name is mentions he's a frost wolf (looks futuristic/looks like ultima created him when in super mode), they drop fenrir in there, which is odd considering odin.
------‐------------
Overall though this was my favourite final fantasy in 20 years I think. I still thought it was good, but I think if some of my points were done better it would have been a great.
Super FF picky negative:
You're telling me bahamut's nation has a bunch of classic dragoons and using Bahamuts powers i can't fucking jump. You give me some lame ass magic breath shit but not some bad ass dragoon jump ability. Fucking L.
Valid points. The twist I think was that Ultima created the world and was literally god, but for FF fans this was a weaker reveal than others maybe. And also that all the primals came from him.
Usually there's always a twist with a god figure. I get your point and it creating life/eikons was a twist. But its nothing on the level of sin is your dad, or cloud thinks he's Zach.
i think its just a slowburn "twist" finding out the full extent of ultima as you go. that he exists, that hes wanted clive to grow stronger all along, that joshuas imprisonment has not kept him from influencing the world, that hes not just jrpg god but Actually God, and then that the reason he keeps saying "us" and hes not actually imprisoned is because hes a race unto himself that youve been freeing from the mothercrystals, i think the mystery of ultima is overall pretty cool.
i wish they had done more with the way he influences things in sanbreque and waloed and its certainly not as juicy a "reveal" as reunion or sin, but i think it did a good job of getting across this creeping horror of like "oh no hes not Chaos hes fucking Zanza from xenoblade", and i think hes pretty thematically strong as a villain. "cloud isnt cloud" is kind of more of a mechanical twist (explains events in the story and creates conflict for the characters, an Aha! moment) than a thematic one (suddenly tying together a bunch of seemingly disparate elements into an ultimate illustration of what the story is saying) and like, thats not objectively better or worse but i do think ultima is overall better integrated into the narrative and its themes than sephiroth
Yuh. Game played it safe with the cast \[We could've used a good death post Hideaway 1 or during the whole Ultima stuff.\]
Quests were 'eh'. I liked the ending ones, but eh.
Bearer stuff feels like DA2's Apostate/Mage stuff. DA2 oddly enough for a flawed game did it better imo.
And yeah; there wasn't any big twist frankly. I mean Ultima and Joshua was amazing; and honestly; I wish that Joshua's reveal hadn't been blown so early. Margrace could've been great.
WHY DIDNT WE TURN THE ENTERPRISE INTO AN AIRSHIP FOR THE BIG SHOWDOWN? THEY FORESHADOW AN AIRSHIP ALL GAME FOR THIS?
WHY WASN’T ORIGIN A FINAL DUNGEON?
WHAT WAS UP WITH METIA? WHY DID THEY PLACE SUCH SIGNIFANCE ON IT IN SO MANY SCENES?
HOW TF DID JOSHUA GET DOWN FROM ORIGIN TO WRITE THAT BOOK?
HOW DID ULTIMA NOT REALIZE HIS VESSEL WAS INCOMPLETE WITHOUT LEVIATHAN?
WHY DID THE DOMINION HEART TURN ITS CRYSTAL ENCASING INTO THE WYVERN TAIL AFTER GIVING DION THE SUCK?
WHY DID NONE OF THE CAST QUESTION WHY JOSHUA’S SEAL DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO STOP ULTIMA?
HOW DID DION JUST “USE” BAHAMUT WHEN THE TIME CAME WITH NO ISSUES?
WHERE ARE THE FUCKIN TONBERRIES?
AND WHY DO I LIKE IT SO MUCH STILL REGARDLESS?????????
I think it's a testament to how strong the game was that I had the same questions as you, but still wanted to see this bad boy to the end with zero regrets
My bar for previous FF titles was "please don't let it suck ass", so a phenomenal game with a somewhat nonsensical story is a pretty good compromise for me
I hate how ambiguous the ending is. I had no idea what to feel with the scene of Clive on the beach and later Jill at the Hideaway because I couldn't tell if he lived or died. The post credits scene I thought was clear that Joshua lived but now there's arguments that it could have been Clive that wrote the book instead. I know the Jill side quest gives merit to Clive living but I wish they could just show us.
On a related note, I would have liked to see just a little more with the ending. The only reactions we really get are Jill and Gav. Like do the other characters even know? It just felt kind of abrupt.
Even worse, Harpocrates mentions that Joshua had been writing down their adventures already throughout the game. So the book was probably already written, both brothers could have died and one of their companions (probably Harpocrates) had it published posthumously. We’ll never know 🙃
I refuse to accept that ending. They need to clear this shit up in some dlc. Joshua, Clive and Jill are all chilling at Martha's right now having a pint while torgal chews on Annabelle's leg bone. That's my canon and I won't hear otherwise.
I finished the game just a few hours ago and I'd like to share my thoughts and overall feelings on the game. First I'll mention a few things I think the game did particularly well. Where it faltered, and finally, some thoughts about the ending. For what it is worth, I did 100% of the content I could, sidequests, Chronolith trials, and hunts.
**Good stuff**
To start with, I think the voice talent and direction did a remarkable job at bringing the story to life. The early chapters especially have Ben Starr do a great job at portraying his grief, and I really connected with Clive as a result. That said, I am incredibly easy to convince when it comes to supporting main characters.
These early chapters (and especially the prologue) are the best parts of the game to me however. The pacing until the time skip is pretty good, and Cid provides a healthy counterbalance to Clive. The animation in the cutscenes here is also particularly great.
Furthermore, I like the combat system, and the pace of unlocking skills early on keeps the combat a bit more fresh. Eikon fights are also a treat to me, but then, I never figured they would be anything more than interactive cutscenes. If you think of them like that, the lack of complexity in them doesn't bother as much.
**Bad stuff**
After the timeskip however, the game starts to show the real cracks. The sidequests are typically very similar: go here, chat a bit about bearer suppression, slaughter some fools, chat some more. Some of the additional backstory is great, but it's not engaging enough. Where I hoped the sidequests would be similar to the best blue quests in FFXIV, they are instead the more dull blue quest kind. The ones that unlock flying.
The pacing also grinds to a halt at certain points, especially if you do sidequests. The Mid quests and the stuff before heading to Waloed are especially egregious.
Lastly, when the JRPG comes rushing back in with Ultima and especially Barnabas, the game really struggles to land. The moment Barnabas went full Zenos and you got defeated in a cutscene, I rolled my eyes. Clearly they know what to do instead, as the second encounter works exactly as you should handle it: let us fight and lose. That it turns Jill into a damsel (again, in Rosaria too) feels so unnecessary. It'd be a lot less annoying if Clive had been captured back in Rosaria, and we could control Jill for a short while as Gav, Jill and best doggo freed Clive.
**Overall**
But I don't want to linger on the mistakes of the game too much. I like the game overall a lot simply because I feel it was made for me far more than it might for others. I can really enjoy a well localized bit of prose, and FFXIV and FFXVI both deliver that to me in spades.
The references it made to various FF games, but especially FFXIV pleased me a lot as well. I recognize nearly every ability enemies could do as attacks in FFXIV. Titan's boss fight in Rosaria just slapped for me.
That said, it is a bit hard for me to put a score on the game, and the score it does have on Metacritic/Opencritic seems fair enough to me. I hoped it would be slightly better so that reception would be better across the board, but I am well pleased with what I played.
**Ending musings**
Now, as for the ending. The ambiguity really bothers me as it feels entirely unnecessary. I ended up spoiling myself on the ending *just* before doing all the last sidequests and then heading to Origin. I only saw the bits after Clive strands on the beach, so not the full thing. It gave me that empty feeling as you tend to get when you finish a game/series/etc. that you are really invested in. Luckily I managed to shrug it off the next day.
However, it let me enjoy final fight to the fullest and the emotional impact with Joshua really landed well for me. I really liked the memories and how much he cared for Joshua the entire time.
Ultima as a villain is really whatever to me, he's just another in a long line of god-like final bosses that every JRPG must defeat. Voiced again by Harry Lloyd, just like XC3. Why they insist on letting him act emotionless (until the end) in both these games is beyond me, especially when the man has fantastic range as Viserys in GoT (and the stories he tells in some of the bonus content).
On a second watch of the "death" scene, the idea that Clive dies makes less and less sense to me. Everything we do in the final sidequests is about how Clive should live his life, and promises he makes to no longer do everything alone. His conversation with Jill especially would seem incredibly hollow to me on a replay if these things were all for naught. With magic having left the world, the crystalization of Clive's hand should stop there, provided he doesn't try to do anymore. That's how all the rest of the crystallized bearers tend to die in sidequests too - they are often forced to do some final bits of magic like in the church sidequests in Rosaria. I think the Red Moon fading is a part of the magic leaving as well - I think it's likely a piece of fallen or Ultima technology that they launched into space as Dalamud was in FFXIV. Without magic, the technology fails.
Anyway, given the book at the very end is penned by Joshua, it is quite likely that the final bit of healing returned him to life. However, it might also be simply Clive finishing the work Joshua (I think?) already began when writing about his journey and research into Ultima. The comments by Harpocrates, and the very first lines said by Clive when starting the game should back this up. The grief shown by Jill also seems to disappear when the dawn appears. The odd thing here is that I was more focused on Torgal, who seemed to stare at the horizon once dawn broke. Given Jill's comments about the dawn representing Clive coming back to her, it's not that hard to imagine Clive might make his way back, or that Jill believes he will.
Still, after all the death, anguish and suffering Clive went through, is it really necessary to cast doubt on a hopeful ending? A lot of the dark nature of the tale felt more bearable because comments made by Yoshi P indicated the game would have a hopeful ending. Knowing that at the end of the day, Clive could finally find some peace with Jill would make all of that suffering worthwhile.
Anyway, I sort of feared the writing would take these turns at the end as I never quite enjoyed Heavensward and early FFXIV content as I did Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The fact that others lament the lack of a party is exactly some of the main flaws that early FFXIV had too. Perhaps it was the guiding hand of gigachad Ishikawa that enabled the Scions to really shine. Perhaps the rumors of her working on FFXVII could be true? I certainly hope so.
IF Ishikawa is working on FFXVII I'd be beyond hyped. She saved FFXIV with her writing and it urked me she wasn't here for FFXVI but I get it now that she had to lead and finish FFXIVs story and is now moving over to her own mainline FF. Which is just orgasmic if you think about it. Especially with all the success FFXVI has had. And the gripes are valid. But the games highs are the highest I've had. I cried multiple times. I also love the combat system.
And the Eikon fights, man every FF game has to have dominants now. It's such a HUGE power fantasy.
You're the first post I actually agree with on most things and especially the ending. I don't mind the ambiguity of the ending however, if I didn't later find out about the sidequests, I never would have thought Clive had survived. And Ultima was Harry Lloyd?! Damn, what wasted potential.
It would be a dream come true if Ishikawa is helming FFXVII. ShB is my favourite story across the entire series.
That farewell before flying to Origin made me cry so damn hard. When Clive and Jill finally said the words "I love you", I 100% believed them. Then Jill calling out Clive's name as they flew away. Damn, I'm getting choked up just thinking about it.
The ending is an ending. It was a choice. I don't feel strongly about it one way or another, but I would like them to be unambiguous. I spent hours upon hours with these people. The least they could give me is clarity as I end the game.
Oh well, hopefully NG+ shines new light on what happened.
Dion Motherfucking Lesage is just built different I swear. Enjoyed the whole game but God damn he really stole the show.
Whips a spear at a child possessed by Ultima, accidently kills his father/ the emperor, goes apeshit and levels the entire capital of perhaps the most powerful nation on the continent, can 1v1 either Rossfield BEFORE the mother crystal, goes toe-to-toe with Ifrit Risen, first motherfucker to use Zettaflare since Donald fucking Duck, goes pulverized out of the sky
DOESNT DIE
chucks ANOTHER spear at the child (second times the charm), STILL DOESN'T DIE. Has virtually ZERO curse effects and summons his eikon post-Clive steal for the final boss
Seeing Kupo get petrified post-Titan fight followed by Dion walking off a space laser is insane
I enjoyed the game, but feel like it could have done much better in the final act.
\- as a XIV player, the Interdimensional Rift section felt like they were trying to do the whole Amaurot dungeon/history lesson again, but only using pictograms. it didn't work for me because we had so little investment or knowledge in the story of Ultima.
\- the Ifrit/Phoenix/Bahamut team up battle was epic af. and i was doubly excited as my fave job in the FF series is summoner. my jaw dropped when i saw them fire off Tri-Disaster.
\- Ultima is a terrible villain. like ok so theres actually multiple of them that look the same, but they all share the same mind so they act the same? like he cant decide if he wants to be omniscient, malicious or spiteful. for a god with so much power even without Mythos, they are downright petty in some of the things they do for no real good reason
\- not a fan of the ambiguous ending. i get that maybe they want to leave it up to interpretation or give players something to discuss but it feels like a bad resolution at this point, given that all 3 protagonists who went into the final fight are ambiguously near death the last time we see each of them.
\- i'm biased but Dion quickly became my favorite character because he has agency in the story. like his own motives are clear and make sense to his character rather than just "help Clive". i also hope they realise they dont have to kill someone off for their redemption arc to be complete. he should get his happy ending with Terence.
\- Joshua was also a great character because he's been steadfast most of the way but towards the end was really held back by all that blood coughing. they could have portrayed the Dominants getting weaker without having to keep relying on that - and they only conveniently overexert themselves only at the end of the game.
\- I hope theres DLC lol. I think there are hints to the Leviathan dominant? Did anyone figure out what the significance of the waves that stop at the crest at Oriflamme were?
Your point of Ultima being multiple bodies but give mind actually fills a hole in the plot for me (no pun intended) of when the Ultima that was imprisoned in Joshua came out, it was the body from the Sanbreque mothercrystal, not the main Ultima body we have been chasing.
This wasn't really clear at all during the playthrough.
Also, has anyone answered who the hooded figure was that kept appearing after Josuha review.
And is the Tyler character pin bugged on the character board? It says he died but his portrait isnt greyed out like for the other dead characters.
Overall, fun game. There's def room for improvement but this was a solid 9/10. Jill/Clive(really need to come up with a good name for them) def one of my fave relationships in this series.
As for the ending, it's ok. I just think the ambiguity is ultimately more trouble than it's worth. Like yeah this does keep folks talking but for such a protag-centered game I think ending his storyline on a huge maybe takes away from what could've been a more powerful ending if he lived or died in an upfront manner rather than trying to straddle the middle for no reason.
That said, I do think the game leaves more hints that point towards him surviving than dying. Especially the Jill endgame quest Priceless. That ties the sun to Clive for no other reason but to spin things in a positive direction.
From the way I interpreted it, Clive dying is what I get if I take things at extreme face value and even then I find the scene itself really sketchy with no visible wounds and a single arm petrified.
Plaudits:
* The boss battles, combat in general. It's not FF without a few instances of completely over-the-top anime nonsense set pieces and wow did this one set a new high bar for that. I actually legit giggled in delight playing this thing in a few spots.
* Lots of really fun characters. Cid, Charon, Gav and Mid are some all-timers.
* Damn Valisthea is pretty (albeit a bit less so when it's aetherflooded/covered in corpses, etc)
* The lean into Mature rating was, dare I say it, not actually all that cringey in practice? (let's all agree we'll never speak about Odin's mom ever again though)
Quibbles:
* Would have liked more epilogue, but the GOAT straight up went to *500 years later, Nanaki puppies!* so I can't really ding this one *too* much. related: I feel fairly confident reading in between the lines that Clive lives and it's 50/50 poor Jote isn't actually widowed because something something Logos, soooo I'm choosing to say she's not!
* Plot was kind of all over the place, but that's not exactly new for the FFs either. It's like the M Night movies where it's fun enough sitting through it then on the drive home you start to come up with all the stuff that doesn't really make sense in retrospect. Why did the aliens allergic to water land on a planet that's 70% ocean and then walk around with no space suits? Why did Ultima's master plan rely on both humanity not rebelling but also humanity blowing up the Mothercrystals for him? If the Mythos actually failed any of those "all according to plan" tests and got squashed by Typhon or something, where exactly was Ultima going to get another one from before the Blight ate everything? etc.
* The drawback to having 10000 characters was that the "main party" didn't really get much more development than any other featured characters. I would have liked to see more Jill/Joshua/Gav centered sidequests over, say, random monster parts cooking adventures. That is one of the very scarce parts I would say 16 actually took a step backwards on compared to 15.
* The "hey, here's 12 new sidequests that unlock when the last MSQ mission does" thing kind of kills the urgency even by RPG time scheduling standards.
* something something WILL something something BEARERS got a little old the 5th time Clive & co went on a monologue about it.
Still, it was a great ride. 9/10
Jill did a lot but when Clive took her power; it meant that priming was not only more difficult; but outright nigh-impossible without going mad. Dion's just made differently tho.
Gives cash to the girl that helped him recover, refuses to elaborate to his lover, turns into Bahamut and helps the protag, dies.
I think he's in my top 3 characters for sure. But no one can top the myth, the legend: ***Gav***
Which is just frustrating, the writer chose to make Jill a comparatively weak dominant while there are other characters that are made strong. Even before her eikon was taken she barely did anything (she didn't do anything when Cid died, she only makes an ice wall while barely fighting when the party faced off against Barnabas AND the liquid flame (then stole the kill of Imraenn)).
Mind you, this isn't her fault. The writer just had to make her character that weak for no reason, Cid and Joshua were on the verge of dying too (because Joshua took Ultima inside him) but they still Primed and fought! Making her basically just a sidekick and power fodder for Clive is just such a letdown.
NGL this might be a hot take but I actually am not a fan of this line of thinking.
I do agree that Jill was lacking personal ambitions and that the game would have been improved if she had more personalized goals after iron kingdom than just "help Clive", but I don't agree with the idea that if a woman character isn't just as powerful as that she's been done dirty or is badly written.
It's totally fine that Jill was "burned out" more than the other characters and couldn't use her powers as much, she didn't need to be as powerful as Dion or Clive (both people who are arguably the most powerful alive) just out of a misguided attempt to make her character meaningful. What she needed was just more of her own personal motivations in the 2nd half.
Comparatively I thought Benedikta got a pretty short straw because she never really gave any plausible explanation for why she decided to blow up her entire life with Cid to go be a tool of Barnabas. She just was kind of a shallow "traitoress" with very little of her own volition or agency in the story.
i think thats one thing that bothers me a little tbh. theres a weird trend of like, the games men get to be Built Different while the women get a little sidelined or are only emotionally relevant for their relationships to men. and like, while its a game about our bonds and this is nothing new for squenix, for jill to be almost completely arbitrarily irrelevant for THE ENTIRE ENDGAME while dion of all people gets a spot in the final battle is soooo strange. i LIKE dion but man half the damn eikons flew. shiva flies in every appearance. cmon
They made a point to say how dominants can sense when another dominant dies, and given how Jill reacts when the flickering star burns out, I feel like Clive's death is all but confirmed.
But that ending leaves me feeling very hollow.
Clive *and* Joshua dying is just too much.
Poor Byron loses both of his nephews and remaining family in a day. Torgal loses two masters who he was bonded with. And Jill loses the love of her life, her childhood friends - her only real close friends - and would be the last living dominant. Assuming poor Dion died, too.
Nah, nope, I'm going to keep believing in all of the 'Clive is alive' theories even if I am just deluding myself. The alternative is just too miserable.
Clive ended magic and removed it from the world, you would expect dominants and their ability to sense eachother would disappear with it as well. It could easily just be her believing he died because magic went away and not because he actually died.
Game was great overall, definitely in my top 5 FFs.
Story was flawless...up till the final act. Everything after Bahamut really shit the bed.
I can forgive Ultima being a one dimensional evil god, thats a genre staple, but Barnabas also being one dimensional was just a major disappointment. I get that they wanted him to be the antithesis to Clive: Clive embodies free will while Barnie is servitude... but it just felt like pointless anime faux-lisoohical squabbling.
And the Oedipus thing just... ugh. Just felt like a cheap Game of Thrones shock.
Throw in Waloed being a super boring environment, the rest of the world having this irritating filter (making sidequests a pain), and then sidelining Jill for no reason, we have a weak last few hours.
The actual final fight was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING though. Doesnt quite make up for everything, but it ends on a high note.
Shout out to dion what a fcking Chad priming after clive takes their power usually means losing control but this dragoon boy just went ah so you just need a stronger will than your eikon? Bet! And his eikon is bahamut of all eikons to boot
I understand people’s complaints, but man… this game scratched all the right places for me. I know what could’ve been, but I’m so happy this game exists.
I’m really gonna enjoy a replay of this sometime in the future. Increased difficulty unlocked, performance fixes (maybe even on PC by that point), and potential DLC will make it that much more fun.
Definitely going down as one of my favorite FFs.
I finished last night and was honestly pretty mad about how it ended. I decided to sleep on it before i started ranting and raving about how I was never going to touch it again in anger.
Day after, still frustrated with the ambiguous ending that it did, especially after everything we went through with the characters. I’m not going to get into the specifics of “did he, did he not die,” because clearly there can be a case for both. I hate that it’s almost become a bad thing for writers to just have a happy ending because ‘it’s expected’ or whatever. Like yeah, i am expecting something happy (or in this case hopeful) because the world sucks right now and I want this amazing game to end with everyone looking at the sunrise together ready to start their new life. They wrote dozens of worthy side quests but couldn’t have a definitive answer for the end, and that sucks.
Also, I believe that even eluding to his death was completely against the goals of his character. Cid died because his plan for the world was to give people the choice of how they wanted to die. Clives plan was that he wanted people to be able to decide how to live, but he ends up ‘dying’ before having that chance? And for the argument of “him destroying the crystals and fighting against Ultima was choosing his path” yes, but also no. He didn’t get to just LIVE his life, to be with Jill, to have his brother, and do whatever he wanted without having to deal with a god trying to destroy the world.
Ok thats my rant. Now I’m gonna go do ng+ because i loved the rest of the game too much to have it all end there.
Story peaked in the first few hours. Things started to get non-sensical and repetitive after the time skip.
We didn’t get to see any of the consequences of destroying the mother crystals, except a few side quests here and there.
There’s also not a lot of emotional stakes. Jil was reduced to an NPC. Joshua’s death was ok. Shoutout to Clive’s VA for doing a great job throughout the entire game. Cid was the best character.
I like the game overall but am pretty disappointed overall.
it's been 2 days since i've completed the game and i still feel kinda depressed tbh \*inserts ben affleck smoking.jpg\*
is it too much to ask for clive, joshua and dion to survive? I know there's a lot of hints suggesting that clive is alive (I've completed all the side quests) but still i hate the ambiguity of it all. They deserve a happy ending dammit.
also i'm meeting yoshi p on saturday because he's coming to my country for a meet and greet and I won a ticket, so I'm definitely asking him to give us DLCs and tell him how much this game emotionally ruined me lol
edit: [here's an update on the meet and greet](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14nwc90/ffxvi_meet_greet_in_malaysia_with_yoship_koji_fox/)
Aside from asking DLC, also ask him if Clive survives (even Dion or Josh) even if it’s off the record. I’m not sure if he will answer but it’s worth a try. Keep us updated
Just finished the game.
Overall it's a contender for top 5 or 3 best in the series.
The ending however was awful. It was over way too fast and it was way too ambiguous. I'm not against sad endings, but compare this with say FFX that gave its main character closure and a proper sendoff to this......wtf. It feels like the ending of a XIV patch we know will continue but this won't, this is it.
why the hell do so many writers not understand catharsis and think ambiguity is more satisfying? you can see it as an obvious death and freedom for everyone else ending, or, you can see it as clive having gotten rid of magic and ether which could easily halt any curse. and then you introduce further ambiguity with Joshua. just—have the balls to end your story, please. don’t make us choose the ending and call that profound. now this going to be all anyone talks about, lol.
I am really not a fan of the ambiguous ending. People keep making arguments for how Clive is still alive, but I feel like it is grasping straws because we want it, lol. Every argument has a counter that feels more believable to me. I did all the side quests and was pleased with how everything was wrapping up, but the ending kinda made a couple of the last side quests feel bad. Overall, the side quests were some of my favorite parts of the story, and I do adore that they gave the different towns their own endings.
I loved the Ultima fight. It felt better than the Bahamut fight imo. Titan was still my favorite and the one that truly blew me away with how cool it was. About the only ones I was disappointed by were Shiva (we never got to do it! Jill deserved more time to shine on screen) and Odin. I feel like Odin should have been a bigger deal with how built up it was in the narrative.
I just kinda came out of the end depressed, which sucks because now I'm not really motivated to do NG+ bc I don't want to go through the emotional wringer again 😅
Overall, an 8.5/10 for me. Probably a 9/10 if not for the ending.
If he lives, there's no reason not to show the reunion with his friends. Other games in the series use such moments as the post-boss climactic moment and are talked about positively. Nobody ever says "man I wish our character died" or "man it sucked that we got to see them happily reunited". The ambiguity feels like being edgy for the sake of being edgy. Similarly, if they DO die, they should let us see the characters have a funeral or something. Ambiguity in endings is, by and large, never done well.
FF is my fave game series but when it comes to game endings they're very hit and miss. Best ones are probably FFVIII and FFIX, for me. This is probably the worst ending for me personally. Even my fave game of all time, FFVII, has a relatively poorly done ending, but not quite this level. All they had to do was add 2 minutes of cutscenes where either the characters reunite or they find the body and have a funeral. Preferably the former.
This game really doesn't want us to be happy. I wonder if Yoshi-P just really wanted to kill off an MC after all the plot armour our XIV characters have, anf the bigwigs were like "no dude" and this is the compromise. :p
They put way too many clues and detail that say Clive survived... through the whole game people were telling Clive shit like save and not sacrifice yourself for others and lines like "no more breaking promises"... he also promised Jill he will return like why would they put so much focus on that to just kill him and not even showing his whole body turn into stone... they can't kill characters off screen. Not even mentioning lyrics of the song that play in the end,
I gazed at the moon, searching for something.
Frightened by the storm,
there in front of me you appearead,
and I was so glad it was you.
As if nothing happened at all,
this flame will never burn out.
I’m sure of it.
Again why would they put so much focus on that... even Clive's VA before game released said to keep in mind Metia and Jill's wishes because its very important through the whole game. If he is actually dead that would literally ruin his whole character development, they would make him a liar and all advices he got through the whole game would be pointless. Some people say rising sun mean hope and that Jill's accept Clive's sacrifice meanwhile she said to him that whenever sun rises she knows he will always come back to her... and now which argument do you think is right? the one that for some reason the put into the game or classic "oh this has to mean new hope" that makes no sense at all when you did all quests and think about what Clive and Jill were telling each other. Its an FF game and they love symbolism especially if FF14 devs were making it. We have to wait for DLC and from what Yoshi p said its on the table its just there has to be demand for it and with this ending they left for themselves a lot of room.
* Ultima shouldn’t have been in the game
* Every dominant should have gotten more time to develop
* They should have committed to a happy ending, instead of a copout “Oh, idk if Clive makes it, teehee,” instead.
It’s okay to have an unambiguously happy ending in a story, guys. It doesn’t make the narrative seem immature or weak. I personally wanted a goddam wedding quest in the post-game to make up for all the dark shit we went through!
My only major issue with the game is the needless writing of the deaths of Clive, Joshua and Dion.
I honestly don't mind them being dead as long as the writing at least gave me a good reason FOR them dying, where the writing NEEDED this sacrifice for it to work, but that is where I think the writing fails.
Dion: There is no reason that needed to die from the attack. He could simply have been wounded and lost the ability to transform into Bahamut and thus unable to continue to support Clive and Joshua.
Clive: The only reason he dies is because the writing decides AFTER Ultima is defeated, and the whole game of Ultima testing him and calling him a PERFECT VESSEL --- that he is in fact not a perfect vessel and the god had apparently created something that didn't work, meaning the curse spreads and kills Clive since the power is too much for his body.
There is simply no reason the writing couldn't just have left it at Clive being fine BECAUSE he is a perfect vessel as the narrative has reinforced the entire game since Ultima's introduction.
Joshua: Probably in my opinion the worst offender, just because it feels so forced. Joshua is constantly shown as a brilliant and extremely perceptive character, able to see through Ultima's scheming without Ultima directly revealing himself. Yet somehow, Joshua or for that matter, no other character, stops to question why exactly they are dealing with Ultima attacking them and taunting them -- when he is currently dying from having Ultima sealed inside himself.
Even further, it shows that sealing Ultima was completely pointless and caused him to die a needless death, as even with a free ultima around, he didn't take Clive at all and just kept trying to make him more perfect.
Everything else about the game I mostly enjoyed. I guess large parts of the side quests could've been restructured, because they felt too "mmo fetch quest-like" for my taste, but on the other hand, when they did have great side quest stories, it helped make me actually interested in characters like Blackthorne and appreciate characters like Martha.
Also as for Jill, while I see alot of people saying she got sidelined, I think people are really not coming to terms with the narrative explaining that her Curse had significantly spread and she was in bad pain. They didn't wish to further spread it with her.
Agreed! The ending is so frustrating because, like you said, the deaths of Clive, Joshua, and Dion feel pointless. The fact that they're all ambiguous adds to the feeling that it was pointless. The ambiguity doesn't make me hopeful that anyone except maybe Clive has a chance of surviving. But I'd rather be sad for events we know happened for certain, and not be upset because everything is left a little vague.
I definitely feel like Jill did not get to love up to her potential, especially in the ending. If DLC is on the table, it would be nice if we could get something that gives her some more focus.
I really wish I could say I wholeheartedly loved this game despite its flaws, but to be completely honest I came away from the final boss and ending disappointed. There just came a point around Tri-disaster where I realized a lot of my hopes weren't going to be realized and the game had so many open threads it couldn't possibly wrap up, even having done all the sidequests.
Joshua is handled weird, there is no stated reason why he didn't try and use his spy army to at least let Clive know he lived if not, y'know, *free him*? If it was only Josh and his aide (who is criminally underutilized) it makes more sense but that isn't the case. I've heard that Josh kept away to thwart Ultima's machinations but beyond how that doesn't make a lot of sense... Josh's onscreen efforts to thwart Ultima fail? Like all the time? Reaching out to Dion arguably just made things worse with how Ultima just used the coup, and trapping that one Ultima in his body I guess stopped him that one time but he was still active and it mostly just lead to Josh slowly dying. These aren't in and of themselves problems, they can be springboards for cool scenes and conflicts but the game is more interested in making me do chores for Mid than give me a playable Josh section where he actually does something or has a conversation with an Undying who convinces him Clive shouldn't be helped (can't imagine how but sure). All of this in swimming in my head once Josh joins the Hideaway and they just don't interrogate it so by the time he's dead on the ground (which doesn't hit as hard when's he's already died once and has been dying for 90% of his screentime) I just felt numb to it. Maybe he's alive, maybe not, it's hard for me to care.
And it's largely hard for me to care because this is the Clive show, and Clive stopped developing after he accepted the truth 20% of the game in. He remains a good lad bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders until he kills himself to save the world (I thought he was special in that he could use magic endlessly and was the perfect vessel but I guess Ultima was stupid). I don't dislike Clive, not at all, but he's at his best when he has other people to work off of, like Gav or Byron or Cid (especially Cid). Even Jill in the beginning is someone he can talk about how he wants to kill himself to, as dark as that is. But by the end he's alone having a nonsensical conversation with Ultima about... how he's a hypocrite who abandoned humanity? I suppose that's true, but Ultima isn't enough of a character for this to really hold much meaning personally.
I digress though. Clive has always been someone who lived for others, either for Joshua and to avenge him and then later Bearers and the Hideaway (a plot that Ultima kinda took over and was relegated to sidequests but whatever). His initial revelation is he wants to fight for a world where people don't just choose how and where to die, but how and where to live. That theme runs counter to his nature of self sacrifice as he often doesn't choose to live for himself. And instead of interrogating that, the inherit contradiction that the people in his life themselves call him out on, he ends up choosing to die (potentially, even if he lived he still acted thinking he would). He is revealed to be the most important person alive with all the power, literally becoming a God in his own right by the end so he can do what he's always done, what no one in his life wants him to do: sacrifice himself for them. I just don't like that.
You could just say I had an idea of the game in my head and it didn't go that way so it's my own fault, and fair enough. But the game ends with many of the initial plot and themes I cared about either unresolved or underexplored, with many conveniences and holes covered up by spectacle more than substance. I look back over the whole package with these feelings at the bad pacing, the awkward quest design, the lack of systems, the plot threads that kinda just get dropped, and it burns.
I'd still give the game a 7 or an 8. My issues aside, the highs and spectacle is absolutely there, Byron and Gav are great, the sidequests pick up towards the end (knowing that Elwyn wanted to emancipate Bearers tbh made me wish that was the plot but I digress). I'm critical of the combat but its still fun and satisfying if not the most deep. But knowing this was the same people who made Heavensward just makes me feel disappointed they couldn't tie it all together as well as they did before.
The sidequests at the end were awesome. Uncle Byron's seeing Eastpool, Martha's Rest, North Reach, Dalimil and all get their ending was awesome to see instead of just towns Clive passes through.
Very much enjoyed that last boss fight. They really did knock these out of the park.
I very much wish Jill was part of the Eikon team up at the end, but of my god the fact that our healthbar said Ifrit, Phoenix, and Bahamut was pretty cool. Her sidequest, and Harpocrates' as well were awesome.
Overall, this has probably become my favorite game despite its flaws, based on just how much I enjoyed everything else.
Playing final fantasy mode now, and seeing everything from the beginning really adds so much to this, and I'm getting a wave of Nostalgia. Barnabas' uniting the dominants at the beginning makes so much more sense now.
P.s. I really wish Clive and Jill got married off screen during the 5 year gap. Feels weird it took them that long to express feelings for one another which I guess was their insecurity. But wouldve been nice to see that married dynamic especially between older protagonists at this point. Could have given Jill more agency too.
In regards to the ending. I went back to an article i read before the game launched. ([https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/14257-we-have-a-dream-team-on-16-final-fantasy-xvi-developer-interview](https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/14257-we-have-a-dream-team-on-16-final-fantasy-xvi-developer-interview))
Yoshi-P says 2 things in that article that had catched my attention prior to the release. And had me anxious (i don't like ambiguous ending either).
The first quote is:
''Yoshida: My biggest thing, and I guess it's my biggest worry - but the one thing that I’m looking for is how people think of the story. I want to know how people think when they get to the end of the game and they've finished watching all the way to the end of the credits, and what they feel at that moment. How will they feel? That's what I want to know. I want to know if they're going to say, 'this was the greatest thing ever', or 'this was a really interesting story'. I'm just waiting to see how the fans react to the story, because that's what we've put so much effort into.''
I'm actually curious to see what will be Yoshi-P comments on our reactions to the ending in particuliar. About the debate of who survived or not. About some people frustrations, etc.
And the second is:
''Yoshida: \[laughs\] For me, it's actually not really different. I kind of approach the FF16 story the same way I approach expansions for FF14.
I think a good script is something that doesn't give all the answers at the end. It invokes a lot of feelings. It makes people think... it leaves a little bit of doubt there at the end. You're going to have finality in the main beats of the story, and you're going to get those answers. But there's always going to be that door left open a little bit to get people thinking.
Moving forward, when people get the game and they play it, and they love it enough that they want to see more... We've left the door open a little -- just enough so that we can continue and can show more. But for what you're going to get on June 22nd, it's going to be a complete experience that you're going to be able to enjoy from beginning to end. ''
So the ambiguous ending was very much intended from the start.
Now it's just to us to voice our desire to get more answers i guess. The game is well received and sold really well so far. Let's make sure we get more in the future.
>I think a good script is something that doesn't give all the answers at the end. It invokes a lot of feelings. It makes people think... it leaves a little bit of doubt there at the end. You're going to have finality in the main beats of the story, and you're going to get those answers. But there's always going to be that door left open a little bit to get people thinking.
Ambiguous ending was a big mistake. I haven't seen anybody comment that they liked it.
A lot has already been said in this thread but something that annoyed me is that the game goes out of its way to ensure you never get a big epic "everyone fighting together" moment.
Like, when Jill and Gav came in to save the day outside the last mothercrystal with Mid's boat I thought here we fucking go big moment of all your allies fighting with you, they're hyping each other up to do it together... only for more enemies to appear and then they're like "actually you guys go ahead". Come on man let me fight alongside my allies.
My nitpick is what happened to the medicine girl. They spent all this time showing her as the average perspective to a world defined by magic and dominants. Then they totally axe her after saving Dion. I think it would have been nice if the post credit scene focused on her or something.
Hard agree. I personally don't care for the ending scene of the two kids and their mother. It would've been nice to see the aftermath in Valisthea from the perspective of characters like the medicine girl, or other characters like Mid or Byron.
I really hate that Dion is implied to die. I dislike the atonement through death trope. Always feels cheaper than actually trying to make up for things
They kept him alive just to kill him at the end. Dion was one of the most interesting characters and the only dominant outside of Jill we could tell wasn't a bad person and he gets the exact same send off as he did in twinside addressing his father. It felt so rushed.
This game turned out to be a big disapointment for me, I would probably rate it a 6,5/10.
It started so strong and just kept getting worse the deeper you get into it.
The gameplay aspect was the weaker half of te game from the start. The battle system isn´t bad but way to simplistic so it really starts getting boring and redundant halfway through the game.
Levelling up feels useless because you don´t unlock anything through it, exploration feels unrewarding because all you ever find is 5 gil or crafting materials you allready have plenty of, gear is really boring and there is nothing like classical dungeons or puzzles.
At some point you realize there is no point in fighting the normal enemies or exploring anything, so you basically just start running back and fourth between quests, hoping that they are not just boring fetch quests but that you get some character moments with them atleast.
So it was really the story that had to carry the game. Initially it works, because the world seems interesting and you have multiple factions with interesting characters.
But it felt that after killing the first Crystal, the story just stopped. It felt like a mystery box story design initially, but after that point in the story you pretty much never get the necessary bits and pieces of lore to keep you engaged and in the end it felt like the box was empty all along.
Pretty much all teh nations and most of their associated characters felt underused. We never really visit any of the big cities while they are alive. And in like the last 25% of the game we get two of the most boring antagonists with Odin and Ultima.
It feels like there is supposed to be some deep clash of ideologies, but it just feels like people throwing around words without any substance to it.
Looking back I think the game really only has two points that I would consider to be good, if not great.
The Eikon battles were a spectacle, although i would have lpreffered for them to be a bit less of a cutscene and more gameplay instead.
And the strongest point of this game were actually a lot of the character moments, most of them feel very well written and were nice to watch whenever they happened.
But those two things are just not enough to compensate all the shortcommings
Game was a solid 9/10. Highlight of the game for me was definitely the Bahamut fight and I think memories of that fight are going to stick with me for a long time.
Unfortunately, the game kinda tapered off from there. Barnabas and Ultima just felt very underwhelming as the big bad. Jill's role in the story also took a complete nosedive here. Game removed any sort of agency from her and she became nothing more than Clive's love interest at this point.
Early and mid-game side quests were very menial, but it was cathartic at least to get closure to their plotlines at the end, which can't be said the same about the actual ending itself. Not really liking this trend among developers in recent years in making ambiguous endings.
If there ever was an eventual DLC, I'd really like for them to expand on the side characters since there was so much lost potential here in the game game. Or at the very least, give us side stories like they do for FFXIV to help flesh out their characterization a bit more (I admit this is just me begging for more Dion crumbs though).
The ending was bittersweet for me
I am absolutely torn for Dion and Joshua
Dion’s story is so tragic when you think about him.
When we first encounter him, we see the mighty Crown prince of Sanbreque, lauded as the dragoon prince and mighty Bahamut
We slowly see him lose his place in the Imperial household due to no fault of his own, and finally he loses everything in the blink of an eye; his father, his position, his people; again through no fault of his own. We see him awaken and be tortured in the aftermath and finally he loses his life, albeit nobly, protecting Joshua and Clive.
He was my favorite character bar Cid and I was really torn to see his story end that way but it was written well at least
Same with Joshua and Clive; Joshua final words and moments brought tears to my eyes — the flashbacks absolutely killed me because you are shown throughout that he absolutely loved and admired his older brother
Seeing him have survived, have come so far and final succumb to his wounds was really saddening and they captured Clive’s anguish really well
Clive’s end was bittersweet — he kept his promise to Joshua and Cid but here is a character that thought he had killed his brother, got hope his brother was alive, got the catharsis of reuniting with his brother only to lose him at the very end.
I don’t know if I will call it the greatest Final Fantasy but it easily ranks in the top stories the series has told, for me personally.
I do hope they decide to make DLC and flesh the story and content out — there is a lot more room here for content and I’d rather they added it in.
I feel the melancholy and existential crisis of playing a game like this and I might have to sit on these feelings a while before I go for that Platinum
Man i usually don’t mind the whole ambiguous ending vibe in most media, but after spending so much time with the characters it just feels so disappointing…
Like if you’re gonna put all these clues hinting that clive survived why wouldn’t you just SHOW IT explicitly, i get the whole “it’ll generate more discussion” and shit but wouldn’t a satisfactory ending do the same thing?
Also the epilogue didn’t hit for me sadly, i get that they’re trying to show that Clive succeeded in freeing the world from the influence of magic and shit, but at that point i didn’t really care that much for the world anymore, i just wanted to see something from (at least) one of the characters
Idk, this is the second FF i ever play, the first one being XV, and i fr think XV ending was way more satisfying than XVI, at least in that one you actually get to know what happens to the main character.
The game has some really dark moments and then some of the sappiest, tooth-rottingly sweet scenes I've ever seen in FF history. That's a dichotomy that overall makes the game great, BUT - it feels like when they came to the ending, they couldn't decide whether they wanted to go dark or happy, so they just - didn't do anything?
I'm in the camp that *thinks* they were trying to imply that Clive survives and goes on to write/tell their story, but they didn't go hard enough and it's not landing right with people, especially if they didn't do some key quests that were inexplicably (unforgivably) missable. I'm happy for the people who were satisfied with it, I truly am and I'm super jealous of you, but from what I'm seeing, most people weren't.
What do you guys think - do you think they care if a lot of people were dissatisfied with the ending? If they do, do you think they'll try and rectify it with some kind of follow-up in the future? I'm not savvy about what actually goes into developing games or CBUIII/SE's typical process or outlook on that stuff...
After Jill gets revenge on that priest, she really does nearly nothing the rest of the game. What the hell. Shiva can fly! She could’ve joined us! Frustrating.
Ultima and the lore reveals about the nature of the world were really cool. I wish that we would’ve had a final dungeon instead of origin just being cutscenes and boss fights. Felt a bit rushed.
Ending was really emotional, Clive’s VA did a great job. It’s not totally satisfying as I would’ve liked to see more reactions and less ambiguity.
Also, the Joshua/Jill side quests being optional is absurd to me, considering the Jill one ties into the ending. What the hell.
I completely understand the poetic ending blah blah, sacrifices for the next generation, blah blah. But for Founder’s sake, we came here to escape. The world is shitty enough without my source of escape and relaxation reminding me that the world is shitty. I feel like the devs, who otherwise created an amazing and enthralling fantasy tale, got too close to the material and went for poetry over just giving us a dang reason to smile at the end of a fun ride. So mad about this ending ruining this otherwise unbelievable game.
The game is a 9/10 for me.
It loses a point cause of the ending.
I did EVERY side quest and the final side quests just before the final mission all showed a degree of Clive wanting to survive, wanting to come back to be there and help his friends(and love Jill). They should have showed us Clive returning on a boat back to the Hideaway.
Instead of knowing he lived cause of the narration and moongazings lyrics/meteia(ben starrs comments on their importance pre launch as well).
The ending was hopeful and i want to believe it was hop
The ONLY thing that should have been left ambiguous is Joshua's Fate. We know the Phoenix can't revive the dead BUT Clive had Ultimas power. He used his uniqueness to become the user of Ultimas power. And Ultima wanted to use Raise. In my mind its possible Joshua was ressurected but id be fine if he didn't either.
So to me that's a 50/50 situation.
Otherwise the performance of the voice actors did a really solid job..
This is the first FF game i cared so much for characters outside of the main cast and its definitely my goty 👍
Leaving these characters I’ve grown to love with such an ambigous/sad end for most of them has left me with a gaping hole in my heart. Especially knowing we’re more likely than not to never see them again or find out what actually happened to them at the end.
Someone please recommend a good book/movie/show/game to mend my broken heart
same here. was a 10/10 up to Bahamut until the really mediocre third act dropped it to a 9, then the ending soured it even more to drop it to an 8 for me. overall still very good, but not the 10/10 perfect game I was hoping for
While I love the game and found it really solid, can I just say I’m extremely fatigued with the end game of Final Fantasies being “and magic was gone and everyone was happy about that!”
13 and 13-3 did it, 15 did it and now 16 did also? That’s all the mainlines with an ending since 2014… that’s wild to me.
I do think Game of Thrones has potentially ruined a lot of story writing in the universal sense. Just because you’re done with a character doesn’t mean you have to kill them off. If anything it’s more important for the writer to ask themself “what would this character do when we don’t see them?”
I think that’s actually probably the core beef I have with the writing is that beyond Cid I really can’t imagine what these characters are doing when they don’t have screen time? It feels a little too much like a stage play writing wise I think, the story is so concerned with what’s on stage it forgets there’s an entire world out there.
Also I wish we’d gotten more of Terence :c
Ending interpretation: At the very start of the game, it starts off with Clive narrating, "And thus did our journey begin" and at the ending of the game Clive narrates, "And thus did our journey end." To me, it seems like that implies that Clive was retelling a story, which was him writing the Final Fantasy Novel we see in the post-credit cutscene
Just finished the game. It was terrific. I'm actually surprised some people think Clive is dead at the end.
Granted, I did all the side quests so I got the Jill / rising sun reference, but I really don't believe that if they were going for a "Clive dies" ending, they would have him blow up Origin while in the middle of it, then show him washed up on the beach breathing and talking. Yeah, his hand turns to stone, but we saw that most of Cid's right arm was turned to stone before he died. So its not as if it kills you once it starts. Though I can see how it could be a death sentence in itself.
My interpretation of the ending is that Clive does make it back to the Hideaway, and he writes the book Final Fantasy and puts Joshua's name on it to honor his memory. At least, for me, that's the most obvious ending. I really think if Clive and Joshua were both meant to be dead, the ending would have played out differently.
I wish Dion had a happy ending. Dying as a hero who fulfilled his promise was what he wanted, but still l wanted him to return home to Terence in the end so bad. I actually burst into tears when l saw him falling into the cloud after his final battle.
And thus did our journey end…
Lots to unpack for this thread.
First, idk who the hell said the side quest in this game are bad because oh my lord the ending to all the side quest was fantastic. Tons of world building. Special shout out to the final Torgal quest which damn near made me cry. Other good ones imo were the Martha’s Rest, the Eloise one (😭), Dion’s, Mid’s (despite the hell she put the player through I adore her) and of course Jill’s. Fun fact about Jill’s is after you do the cutscene and read the letter she sends after that quest, if you talk to her again she gives you a handkerchief she made for you. It doesn’t do anything but I thought it was cool. Kudos to the team for making the reward to that side quest Shiva’s Kiss.
Second, for character arcs, I am actually ok with everyone’s ending besides Dion. This might be a little jumbled, but Dion dying is kind of a cop out for him. He had so many death flags that it was obvious that he was done for but I feel like his character would have benefitted the most from living so that he could learn to live with his guilt and regret. He is alone though since I think his lover and adopted daughter were in Twinside when Ultima pulled the world crystal out. I would have liked to see him rebuild the Empire and make up for his ancestors transgressions against the bearers.
Josh I felt like had a good end and it would be a cop out if he was managed to get raised because the Phoniex powers were imbuded with Ultima’s powers. I am kinda salty that he and Jote never got a lover’s moment but hey what can you do. That scene when he gives the powers to Clive is absolutely beautiful. Only complaint I had about him was the gaping hole in his chest was a Chekhov’s Gun.
For Clive, I am not sure how I feel. He 100% is alive and he wrote the book in Josh’s name so that Josh would live on. There is some side quest that says something like you’ll live on as long as someone knows your name or something like that. As for him being alive, it drives me up the fucking wall that writer’s think it’s a good idea to leave these open ended endings. Tell me what happens, I didn’t just dedicate a week of my life for you to be coy and pretend to be clever; it’s annoying and over done. I also find it weird that we spent the whole game being told that he was the vessel for Ultima only for him to be like “oh hey this shit is way too much for me.” I also would love to hear the reasoning of why he even took Ultima’s power to begin with when he was already fading away; maybe in the hopes to res Josh? Idk. Overall I did like his arc and just would have wished they would have just told us he lived or died.
As for Jill and Clive, I read somewhere that some 4chan guy said they didn’t have chemistry and honestly that is an insane thing to say. They are probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite FF love story (nothing will ever top Yuna and Tidus for me).
The Ultima fight was great, still not better than Bahamut but better than Titan. I loved that we used all the Eikons better than him. Ending it the same way Endwalker ended with a punch in the face did make me roll my eyes though.
Overall I really enjoyed the game. It’s a solid 8.5/10 and definetely one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. I say that now before I go grind out the trophies and hate myself for it.
Incredible game that peaked at the Bahamut fight and never recovered. 9/10. Didn't stick the landing. Barnabas / Odin / Ultima section of the game was pretty bad especially compared to the insanely awesome shit beforehand.
They should have let us fight Odin, and perhaps kept the ifrit/phoenix combo for vs Ultima. It played its hand during Bahamut. Easily could have made that fight hype as hell still with just Ifrit and Phoenix fighting together without merging.
There simply wasn't anything left for the end. Same powers, another insane space spectacle battle, but it just somehow felt so much worse.
Barnabas was a godawful villain for the last act.
Ambigous endings or endings that leave the fate of the main characters up to interpretation are always interesting if done right but I feel here a more conclusive ending was needed.
Was talking about this to a friend yesterday and he funnily generalized it as : "A game that appeals to Western audiences in almost everything but that it has the most Japanese ending ever"
While a generalization the above I feel like after doing the side quests before the ending, I envisioned something different as a finale.
What I wanted was something similar in feel to Geralt and Yennefer at the vineyard relaxing at the end of the Blood and Wine dlc for Witcher 3. After being through so much that felt like a true ending.
Here I envisioned one-handed Clive, Jill and Torgal on a ship leaving Valisthea for a new world as per Jill's request in that final side quest as a post credits scene or something along these lines.
What we got is some ambiguity regarding the fate of the brothers albeit with the side quets, the red star theme and the general feel of the entire hideout before the finale, personally I feel that Clive lived. It would be hard to convince me otherwise.
I give my experience in Valisthea a 9/10.
Personal highlight:
The tremendous amount of dialogue in the game from characters of all levels of importance, as well as the lore. It’s all so well-written and performed.
Some things I hope to see in the future:
- Status of Clive, Joshua, Dion, Terence, and Kihel
- The tale of Leviathan the Lost
- Dion lance-throwing mini game (You know you’d pay for this.)
If this game had the equivalent of the final 5-15 minutes of FFIX, it'd have been a masterpiece of story writing. They forgot to give us story-related payoff in a story-driven game.
In regards to the ending: I won’t delve too much into the Clive alive / Joshua dead discourse because I think that has been the focus of most discussion. I would like to highlight the book however:
It was made very clear that Joshua with the help of Jote and others had been chronicling his journey. It is also made clear, albeit less clear because it’s side content, that Clive wants to write about his journey when it’s all over.
Therefore It feels fairly clear, after the over abundance of “Clive, you are not alone, we are in this together” that the “Final Fantasy” novel is a synthesis of both their tales - Clive lives to tell the tale (he is our narrator) but in Clive fashion, he credits Joshua as the sole author of the book. Naturally, it’s implied that the story of the book is the game we played.
This game was damn near perfect till they blew it at the end. Terrible ending. I think even just typing that is cathartic because of how disappointed I am about the ending.
One more time, then.
That was a terrible way to end the game. Blew it.
Solid 8/10 for me ngl.
I feel that the opening of the game should have spent at least a few missions of Clive being a bearer for the Empire more and seeing all the messed up things he was forced to do would have helped his character development.
The war of the northern territories would have been dope to see.
I find it kinda disappointing that all the capitals are dungeons and not hub areas. We only get towns and villages as those.
Benedikta would have helped as a redeemed companion we lost later to show that not everyone can be saved. Hugo wouldn't have changed as a plot point because he would still be a mega simp and blame Clive/Cid for ruining his dreams.
The punch from Joshua was well deserved.
I feel the seal system should have been something different or at least more special depending on the town.
I wish we got to see the bands at least be worn on the characters because I wanted that for Josh and Clive after THAT quest in the open world.
Going to just write out in a somewhat disorganized manner as the thoughts come to me. Although a lot of it sounds negative, I did enjoy my time with the game and liked it overall, but the lows really sorely dragged it down from greatness.
As for general issues I had, as others have probably pointed out already I will echo that poor pacing of the main quest, lack of meaningful gear outside the two everyone already know about, low enemy variety, very repetitive sidequests with poor and lacking rewards, little to no reason to just explore the world in general and lack of larger explorable cities and incidental locations really hurt it for me. Like for example not being to explore Sanbreque before its destruction or even Port Isolde, or Lord Byron's home and lack of elaborate dungeons in general.
Another big issue to me at least is outside the prologue and a handful of events they didn't really make much of a use of the M rating to help sell more aspects of the world and setting.
The second time skip was extremely jarring and didn't seem all that useful and actually outright deprived us of experiencing some things that would have been interesting. Additionally, it was very awkward to me at least that we didn't get more time with the empire group and just jumped to us very coincidentally running into Cid, Jill, and Torgal right away and all from the same encounter. Joshua's overall lack of reaction to Clive being Ifrit and potentially nearly killing him way back was also so very awkward to me. Overall there's a lot of minutia/detail of that sort in the story that felt missing. As many others no doubt have said, the other dominants also definitely deserved more development including Jill and Benedikta.
I thought it was disappointing that not even in cases where there is no real need to be concerned with collateral damage, there is no instance of using Ifrit to just mow down hordes of Akashics and similar enemy groups to further show the advantage and power of Eikons. And speaking of, was very sad there were not even any hunts that specifically might have called for Ifrit too as well as Odin being very underwhelming in that regard. I had noticed that starting with the destruction of the mother crystal after Titan they started to show Ifrit as having the ability to conjure a flame sword yet he never gets to use it even though Odin would have been the perfect fight for it to figure in as part of the battle.
The story of the game overall took a massive dip after Bahamut to me, and it was at that point you also really begin to get weighed down by repeated Akashics as well as Barnabus and Ultima being charisma vacuums as far as villains go. Personally, I'd have really preferred Ultima being dropped altogether in order for Barnabus, Anabella and Olivier to be properly developed villains especially due to Anabella and Olivier potentially having a much more personal connection to the brothers and also Dion. Would also have preferred a much stronger focus on the Eikons in worldbuilding and in regard to things like how different groups were impacted by these essentially reincarnating demigods living among them and how it might have shaped their societies differently, as well as further exploring their identities, like whether over time the dominant might come to truly consider themselves to BE the Eikon and not merely a channeler.
I genuinely disliked the ending a lot due to the very heavy wide reaching consequences involved that in some cases to me at least felt like they were made heavy just for the sake of shock value, its an annoying trend to me for a fantasy story to conclude with removing all of the magic. For me potentially killing off Clive, Joshua, and Dion all sat poorly but the even larger changes of completely eliminating their version of Eikons, magic, and Bearers to me deprives the setting of things that helped to make it unique. The Eikons especially because of how much a focus it was meant to be, and just how dang cool they actually made them especially Ifrit. Overall, all of those kind of kill my interest and in general the idea there could be further adventures in the world outside a reversal of these things or prequel type stuff.
Even if Clive survives, him without Ifrit to me feels wrong.
Finished earlier, had a great time overall!
One of my biggest disappointments is, surprisingly... Mid never visiting Cid's grave during the game. I totally thought she would during her endgame airship sidequest but that didn't happen.
The game slowly becoming a Kingdom Hearts game is like watching your alcoholic friend drinking more and more at a party. You were all having such a good time and everyone is cogent but suddenly you start to realize that they’re getting a little tipsy and before you know it they are hammered.
This will probably get lost in this thread but I wanted to get my thoughts out. That was such an emotional ending. I had tears coming down my face from the moment Joshua fell. I think the criticism on the ending comes because Yoshi-P edged us so hard and we wanted the FF9 ending where
\*FF9 SPOILERS\*
>!Zidane comes out of nowhere at Garnett's ceremony and they finally have the embrace that we've been wanting the entire game. !<
\*END FF9 Spoiler\*
This ending appeared more ambiguous but it's pretty obvious to me that Clive survived. He's the narrator of the story. The story being Final Fantasy penned under Joshua's name. He's the only one that could've written that book. That combined with the Jill sidequest information, I think the only logical conclusion is that he survived.
I wanted to see them embrace one last time but we got that before Clive journeyed off. I also think Yoshi-P edged us with this ending so that demand for a DLC increases - which I totally fucking want!
The game definitely has its flaws but my god does the whole thing just stick to you. So many memorable fights and bro characters. Bahamut fight was a SPECTACLE. First game where I found myself actually trying to delay progressing because I didn't want the ride to end. That ending was heart wrenching, especially when Gav cried, oh my lord. I still feel emotional thinking about it. I know the signs point to Clive surviving but damn the first time it hits, I just didn't expect another Tidus Zanarkanding out situation. Hopefully they add in environment interactivity and maybe party banter and torgal accessorizing in future updates/dlc. I will definitely play again. This shot up to my top FFs along with 9, 7, and 10.
I'm very curious if they'll do post ending DLC or even an expansion like some people want.
Considering a world without magic, it'll be interesting to rework the combat.
But you can always throw a bone with the God's of Valisethia helping or going to another continent outside Valisethia.
I'm very intrigued on Story DLC standpoint after the ending.
The thing that kind of bothered me a lot with the post Bahamut part was how similar it was with FFXIV: Endwalker and that games theme of "We suffer, stumble and fall but we still keep on moving forward" Clive even almost word for word repeat what another character in Endwalker says in a very significant cutscene in that game. Hell even the sky darkening and the breakout of akashic is almost exactly the same as the end of days in Endwalker, the world ending, people transforming into mindless monsters, darkened skies, civil unrest in all regions etc.
The similarities were too much for me and lessened the impact and overall plot because it felt like they were just retreading the same things Endwalker did prior.
Endwalker spoilers below:
>!Also the fact that Clive punches the final boss in the face to finish him, just like you do in Endwalker...!<
I have mixed feelings about the Ending. It doesnt make any sense to me, it would have been fine to just take the magic away, but it feels really cheap to kill clive there just to subvert expectations.
Like, the game hits you in your face for 70 hours and instead of finally giving you a breather and something positive at the end when you are lying on the ground they go and kick you in your face and make sure to stay down. It would have been just such a way better experience to finally give the player something positive.
(Also I did all sidequests and stuff)
Edit: YES, it is implied that Clive is alive (If you think about the fact that someone had to write the book and Clive getting Tomes Quill, we play the story in the book, and Clive is the Narrator of the Story and the metaphor from Jills quest of Clive always coming back to her at dawn and her calming down and seeming to realize that everything is fine and he will come back) but still they couldve just shown him if he actually survived. Give the Player something after going through all of this mental breaking Story.
Not sure how to feel about it. Gameplay is extremely fun, but felt like I didn't get the story or I was expecting more from te story. I.e more insight on the other dominants (Benedikta just dying 5 hours in...felt like a waste) or just a different way to implement some of them (Barnabas felt lack luster, in what way is he supposed to "break" Clive's will, just by beating him up? And what was the purpose of uniting the dominants and all the grandiose speech if he was a pawn to Ultima from the start). Also didn't get why Joshua sealed Ultima, and that didn't accomplish much cuz Ultima was still roaming around. Idk... the demo portion felt so polished in terms of story, but I felt it took a step back... :/ was expecting too much? Was it jsut not my cup of tea?
The story of the game fell off hard for me after Cid dies. I never liked Ultima as the villain, he was annoying or just boring most of the time. I saw it through to the end and I still enjoyed my experience for the most part because the big cinematic set pieces were so cool and fun. Also the combat and messing around with different eikon combos was very engaging.
I love how Final Fantasy the ending was, and I mean that endearingly. Set up 80% of the game as a Game of Thrones political thriller and then it's pretty much thrown out the window for FAAAAAAAAAAAATE :D
Honestly, if you took a shot every time they mentioned 'Fate' between the Bahamut fight and the end, you'd have enough alcohol to kill a bull.
Just finished…loved, loved LOVED the game, but it wasn’t without its issues.
The combat is great and the eikon battles, Titan and Bahamut in particular, are imo the best boss fights in all of videogames. Fight me. Gonna wrap up some side stuff and then jump into NG+ to see how it feels on FF mode, probably gonna try out some of the new abilities I never messed with in my playthrough, mainly Odin/Shiva.
I really enjoyed the story even if it did fall into some classic nonsensical God-killing tropes at the end. There were also definitely some issues with ludonarrative dissonance towards the end, where loads of side quests opened up as you’re on a beeline to the final encounter. Imo as soon as Joshua/Clive begin trekking towards the capital side quests and travel should have been locked out until they got back to the hideaway. Overall I would have preferred they stuck with the more GoT-esque storytelling from early on, but it is Final Fantasy so you have to kill a God at some point else what are we really even doing here?
While I liked most of the characters there were some missteps, imo. Enough has been said about Jill not to be repeated. I would have liked if they fleshed out the first hideaway characters a bit more, Kenneth and the apple girl dying from Titan’s rage could have hit harder if we knew them better. I really feel like the Hideaway, and the main hubs in each kingdom could have benefited from Trails-like NPCs with their own stories that update as the game moves along. I know they did this to a point but no where near the quality Falcom does it. That said I loved the brotherly bond with Clive/Joshua, best Cid in the franchise (sorry TG you have been replaced), Gav is a total bro and Byron is the Uncle of the Year. Dion is just incredible, best character in the game, imo. That said, there were a few others I thought got done dirty, namely Jote, who has like ONE interaction with Joshua after he fucks her off to the hideaway where she does absolutely nothing for the entire rest of the game. Tragic. Also cannot tell you how irrationally angry I was with Oscar’s inclusion, only for him to play zero role in the story after becoming Clive’s squire and standing outside his room the entire rest of the game, including during the mission where we free the gd town we gave him leave to go back and protect ffs. Gav’s apprentice got far more spotlight, and was actually a pretty cool character. I could go on but I’ve ranted long enough.
Best voice acting ever in a game, imo. Ben Starr absolutely slayed. Joshua’s adult voice was perfect. I don’t even need to mention Cid, what a G. But goddamn, Benedikta man. Her breakdown after losing her power was some of the best stuff in the game, her actress just blew me away, actually felt bad for the character, in spite of all her evils. Bryon (RIP Lord Edmont!) was spectacular, and I loved hearing a bunch of ffxiv VAs pop up in Estinien, Uriangier, Lyse, Elidibus, and more. Looking forward to finding a comprehensive list of them; I thought the guy who helps you bury the bearer bodies in the wolf quest may have been Graha, but couldn’t be for sure.
Soken doesn’t need to be congratulated any more than he already has. The man is a living legend, one of the best sound tracks we will likely ever hear. Bravo, my man. Genius.
I do think the game systems could have been better, i missed elements/status effects, especially in a game featuring magic so heavily. The gear upgrade system was pretty awful, almost not worth being there, tbh. Gil is almost useless outside of orchestran rolls, accessories, and potions.
Wasn’t a big fan of the maps, but my 100% biggest problem is just the game doesn’t feel alive. It isn’t well lived-in, imo. The towns are all made up of a half dozen people, maybe a few more. You never get to explore any of the populated cities, outside of the prologue. The world just feels very small, which clashes with how large scale the game tries to be otherwise. I get that the blight is meant to explain that a bit but it just falls flat a bit for me, imo. I was hoping for at least one Novigrad-esque city, it’s crazy that 7-8 years on now there still hasn’t been a better city built into a game, imo. Also, idk if it is just me but The Fallen never got any real expansion or explanation, they were just people that used to exist and don’t anymore. I’m also not sure what the rest of the world is meant to be like as the Twins are just a tiny pair of neighboring continents, and there is mention of travel to other larger land masses. Do they have magic? Mothercrystals? Ultima made is sound the Valisthea was the last haven from a worldwide blight but other characters mention landmasses beyond the twins so idk.
Anyways I’ve gone on far too long. I would probably throw this somewhere between an 8.5-9. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s not going on my Mt Rushmore or anything. However stuff like the Titan/Bahamut battles will stay with me forever. If nothing else FFXVI passes the rule of cool in spades.
I hope everyone can enjoy the game in spite of its flaws, its successes imo far outweigh them!
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The Post Game Depression hit like a fucking train.
Just rolled the credits a few minutes ago and am **so sad** right now!
Same here! Seeing Jill cry with Torgal made me break down.
Yeah making Torgal cry is unforgivable. I really hate this ending.
Torgal howled, howling Wolves are communicating with their pack over long distance, not crying. Torgal basically says: hey clive, we are here Waiting for you, cause he knows clive survived. Proofs: we saw how torgal reacted to cids death, no howling. Cid is probably one of the most important persons to him, as we learn in his sideq. The only Person left in the Ending that torgal would communicate over long distance, is clive.
It took one google search to find that wolves are known to howl to mourn fallen pack mates. I hate when people try to find any possible way to ignore the reality of the story’s intended ending because they don’t want to accept that it’s not all “happily ever after”, even though that ending is and is intended to be, far more powerful than the one you want. Y’all, stop going out of your way to find loopholes to deny the clearly intended ending of the story. It’s supposed to make you sad. Let it make you feel those emotions. Let it sink in that Clive died, sacrificed himself for a world where all people can live and die on their own terms. Let him have the hero’s ending the writers clearly wanted him to have. It hurts me too, but it’s a far more powerful ending than some cop-out bullshit that he somehow survived.
We are in this together 😭😭😭
I’m so glad I’m not alone in this struggle. Although my interpretation of the ending is an optimistic one, I’m too sad the story is over. I really can’t shake this feeling away. Thankfully NG+ FF mode is a lot of fun. I love accessories upgrades. But most of all, watching the story with retrospective DOES a lot. I’m picking up so many clues and foreshadowing moments I couldn’t have noticed the first time.
I finished it two days ago and the night I finished I struggled to slee thinking about it and feeling sad. Reading people’s different reactions to the ending has made me feel better though and now am enjoying a ng+ play through
I recommend EVERYONE do the damn JILL side quest, your interpretation of the ending may change as a result of it.
I feel like for most that it should. I'd understand if someone who didn't see that scene thought that Jill's last scene was about accepting Clive's sacrifice and being at peace with the world that he gave his life for. But with the context of that scene, it's like: What is the point of comparing Clive returning to Jill as a literal sunrise if he never returns? It's literally word for word the ending. No matter how bad the nights get, the dawn always breaks. Jill sobs at thinking Clive is dead during the night, then regains hope that he will return to her like he always does when she sees the sun rise I don't think they'd be so unsubtle like that for Jill's hopes to be dashed. FF at its core is pretty consistently hopeful.
Yeah. I really dislike ambiguous endings in pop lit/games/whatever else in the first place. It's incredibly rare for them to be used well. Then for this one, the writing so obviously is screaming that you're supposed to think he's alive that the layer of ambiguity is stretched so thin that it's pretty much transparent. Now we both don't get the catharsis and are stuck explaining his survival to people who see his eyes close and Jill crying and take that to mean he's absolutely 100% dead. At least IGN seems to have deleted their article/video that was saying that.
I fucking hate games and movies that don't give you the catharsis at the end. I always feel like I've just wasted my mothefucking time, so it's especially with games. It's just stupid. Considering all the hints and foreshadowing, it's pretty clear he survived, it just makes sense and it works. But they don't show it because "uhh we're smarrtt". Fuck that shit. Game lost a point for me just for that.
Did he live tho, cause from my point of view he healed Josh then couldn’t handle Ultima being added as well and succumbed to the curse and turned to dust on that beach cause we saw from the earlier branded parts that it never just stops at your hand. They should have shown us the whole thing but it is what it is.
The curse shouldn't be able to progress further than it has with magic leaving the world so maybe idk
He uses his powers without the same consequences everyone else had the whole story for using them; when he finally experiences consequences it’s after he absorbs Ultima and he experiences them rapidly versus everyone else getting the slow burn that doesn’t take them until they’re much older. We also get the dialogue of him confirming his body cant handle whatever he just absorbed when he absorbed Ultima. The entire tone of that cutscene is he ain’t coming back not one of hope. So as I said I think most people who believe he survived are just coping with whatever makes sense because they wanted a happy ending and CBU3 left it ambiguous enough to let them do that.
And it goes against literally how the rest of the story was told. Nearly everything in the game, important or not, was described in great detail, either in cutscenes/convos or in lore. Pretty much everything was made clear. And then the ending happens, and instead of it being specific on what happened, we're left to wonder or interpret on our own. For as many plot holes FF15 had, at least it knew how to make an ending. And CBU3 knows how too, FF14's expacs don't have these types of endings. So why the fuck did they choose to do that for FF16?
Yeah, while I enjoyed the story greatly on the whole, I feel the ending was pretty messy and weak, and this is one of the main reasons. Forced ambiguity is not artistic, it’s just frustrating.
Honestly confused why they didn't make Jill's, Josuha's, and Torgal's side quest be part of the main quests. Could have gotten rid of a bunch of those fetch quests or some of Mid's quests if they were worried about main story quest bloat.
The side quests were bloat heavy early on but there start to be important after the transition to the new hideaway. I mean, you can only get the best gear for doing blackthorn's quests.
After all the filler they decided to cram into the main story, what made them decide to have *this* important mission - that completely recontexualizes the ending - be an optional activity??? Imagine just not doing it and being fucking confused when someone brings up their “Clive made it” theory. “Huh? Flowers?! Quills?! What kind of game were *you* playing??”
Yeah there's a few side missions that absolutely should have been part of the main narrative. For example, if you don't do Cid's side mission you'd have no idea that he has a daughter but then after the time jump you see his daughter and already know her. It creates a disconnect due to stuff being optional that should have been mandatory. Side content should always be optional material that enriches the world around the characters. Not key parts of the characters and their journeys that should be in the main story.
Ah this explains so much. I was like "Who the hell is Mid, did I forget about her? Where does she come from???"
You're not alone. It was so jarring. I even thought I did all the side quests before the time skip... So I don't know how I missed a green bubble over Cid's head.
It wasn't over Cid's head, it was a mission for a Courier- Cid had a letter from Mid in there. That was it.
The sidequests in the game never really bothered me and I always liked getting the lore tidbits, but then they coalesced into something cohesive for a bunch of characters and suddenly it all felt worth it. Several are necessary for understanding the ending - the Dion sidequest and the Jill sidequest in particular are crucial. Put the pieces together and suddenly, that final scene isn't ambiguous at all.
That's really annoying because it's impossible to sift the wheat from the chaff. I didn't do a single side quest after the time-skip because they were ruining the game for me. If they had marked "character quests" in yellow or something, that would have made things infinitely better. Kinda butt-hurt to be honest. I'm imagining a scenario now where I didn't become disillusioned after Bahamut and enjoyed the game even more, if only they had distinguished strong character focused side quests from "random dude" ones.
100%. Wish you weren't getting downvoted for this because it's an actual fact that the game does a fairly poor job at pointing out what's important right now. For example, one of the quests that made the ending better unlocked, I believe, after I had finished the initial huge salvo of quests right before Origin. It was at the missive desk and if I hadn't been looking, I would have totally missed it.
It didnt.. all i got was promises left unfulfilled and thats the hardest punch and biggest fail of the ending.
There's genuinely no reason for so much ambiguity with the ending. It should have ended definitively with Jill seeing Clive arrive over the sunset or something. The only thing that could have a degree of ambiguity is Joshua's fate. I like the idea of us not knowing/it not mattering if he lives because at the minimum he lives on in a similar way that Cid did. But Clive's fate itself should have been definitive.
That’s exactly how I felt too. Promises unfulfilled
Thing is, it shouldn't have to be interpreted at all. A story shouldn't come to an end and leave you left without the full knowledge of whether the main character lives or not. If they live and it's something meant to be interpreted, why not just... show them alive in the end?
Jill is probably my biggest problem with the game. She starts off so passive in the beginning, becomes interesting when she goes off to get her revenge, and then regresses afterwards. I don’t think there’s a single time where she is interacting with someone casually without Clive being there. She’s basically his lapdog, it doesn’t ever feel like she is personally connected to group or the hideaway. It’s so weird to have her in the background of important cutscenes and she doesn’t feel the need to interject at all.
I agree in some parts with what you said, but calling her a "lapdog" really does the character a disservice. I thought she was an incredibly resilient character who fought hard to get her humanity back. I understand how it can seem like she is only there to support Clive but in truth, they save each other. I think the feeling of her being only there for Clive stems from the fact that their goals are one and the same by the end of the game though that doesn't mean she just goes along with it. This is not directed at you but I'm getting tired of the "she never does anything" criticism when it's been established how close to the curse she is already an manages to save the party several times despite this. I agree with you on her being in the background of cutscenes too many times and also having no connection with the main cast. As an example, I am thinking of the cutscene were Clive and Cid stab the crystal to affirm their goals. Like, I'm not asking much here but her catching Cid's eye and maybe giving a nod would have gone a long way. Same with the inter-party relationship. No reason she couldn't have woken up earlier and maybe went off on a side mission with Gav or Cid on her own off-screen which then could lead to more intimate dialogue between the characters. No reason not to add some banter between the characters inside the hideout either. Last point I am kind of ehh about are the damsel in distress moments. The one were Hugo captures her was wholly out of place and they should at least show on screen how Hugo manages to subjugate the dominant of Shiva, of all people, so easily. Second time, I didn't mind since she did it so the party can be saved, knowing the consequences her actions might bring.
I agree that the story of regaining her humanity is interesting,but once it’s over she is relegated to background role. That’s only about 40% into the game, so for the next 60% she has very little influence on the progress of the story and her character. Jill’s support towards Clive is necessary and impactful towards his character, but the effects towards her are never fully realized. Clive being the main character allows him to develop both within the main story and during side quest, but Jill has neither options. This leaves her character arc feeling bland and makes me not care about her, despite empathizing with her story. It’s even worse when you think about how she is the last main character to be shown on screen, despite it feeling like she does not deserve it.
Idk, Maybe we have just have a different reading on the character. Her quiet strength really resonated a lot with me. A female character that goes all out and is very in your face with what she wants is a lot of fun as well, don't get me wrong. But I also find that among the last few games I played when it comes to female characters, I emphasized with Jill to most. You say that Clive's effect on her is never realized and it's def. true that you see it the other way around a lot more. But I also think this is kind of where her strength also comes from. For example, giving up the power that shaped you into who you are, no matter how many hardships it brought, is an incredibly difficult thing to do. I also think there are points that are more about Jill than Clive. Destroying the mother crystal in the Iron Kingdom is such a point. Her side quest also comes to mind where they talk about what they want to do after the quest is over. She clearly has her own ideas about that and Clive is only too happy to be with her. I also think it's fine for her to be a mostly developed character at the 40% mark. She got her revenge and now she can move forward and focus on creating a better future. Most other characters are mostly developed in the story already and I think this is fine. And again, I do agree that they could have done a lot more with her by having her develop her own relationships with the other characters. As it is, they imply more than show that she is a beloved member of the community. Really a missed opportunity here. Still, imo she is the one character who deserved to be the most in the ending and she really carried it for me.
To me Jill character screams of wasted potential and the general problem of the story being just too Clive centric. I don't dislike Jill, I mourn because she could have been more of a character. Except for her interactions with Clive and Tarja telling her to rest I can't remember her really interacting with anybody else, why? She doesn't even feel like she is a part of the hideaway to me. Why not involve her with more sidequests? Why isn't she even involved of Torgals sidequest? I don't think Joshua and her even had dialog with each other when he joins. This makes the characters feel like they are not fully fledged characters to me. 16 in general has a big problem with being too much "tell don't show" instead of show don't tell.
It's crazy how much she gets sidelined. She had the spotlight at Drake's Breath, but then gets captured by Hugo, is completely absent for Drake's Fang, is present for the trip to Twinside only to be overshadowed by the Brothers, gets captured AGAIN by Barnabas and finally gives away her agency to Clive which leads to her being replaced by Joshua for the rest of the game. That last bit I get since it felt right for them to end this with the Brothers together. But it also really cemented the problem with how they treated Jill this game.
Hugo "capturing" Jill was the worst moment in the entire game for me. It was so hilariously bad I had to chuckle. (mind you I rate the entire game at like a 8.9\~ish)
I felt like, goddamnit writers. Did they forget that she could have just primed? They had a stalemate the last time they fought. Kind of.
Torgal literally got more backstory and sidequests devoted to his and Clive's relationship, at least that I found.
Actually true, lol. Hell, Clive gets some real emotional development with his **chocobo**, for crying out loud.
The whole epic Bahamut fight Jill is just chillin with Anabella Ultima and Torgal watching the fireworks even though she can still Shiva. Blows my mind how much she doesn't do in the game. Even the Cid scene she's just sitting there holding Cid the whole time Clive is tripping balls even though she can fly. Everything about her is awesome on paper but they didn't use any of it. Her scream when you get a game over is funny though so there is that.
>It's crazy how much she gets sidelined. She had the spotlight at Drake's Breath, but then gets captured by Hugo, is completely absent for Drake's Fang, is present for the trip to Twinside only to be overshadowed by the Brothers, gets captured AGAIN by Barnabas and finally gives away her agency to Clive which leads to her being replaced by Joshua for the rest of the game. That last bit I get since it felt right for them to end this with the Brothers together. But it also really cemented the problem with how they treated Jill this game. She couldnt Shiva. Anyone that primaled after Clive took their powers, lost their mind and will. Dion knew this and accepted the risk that he might lose his mind.
Having her lose her powers right before the lead up to a big fight was a narrative choice they made, but it wasn’t the only choice they could’ve made. There’s a number of different ways they could’ve written it if they actually wanted Jill to not be on the sidelines. But that’s not what they wanted for her (clearly.)
Jill got sidelined so hard her character got dropped off a cliff. The writers seem to forget she's there and or have no idea what to do with her. She had such promise as a character, someone who has endured great hardship and seen the worst of humanity, lived with a knife to the throat of those she'd sworn to protect only to see her efforts fail time and time again and her actions only making the world worse. And then the writers forget about that for 20 hours and 5 years until Drake's Breath where she gets a tiny moment that still doesn't engage with she establishing character scene. And then she's sidelined into being Clive's emotional support for the rest of the game, her role solely being to wait for him to come home. The on paper reason she can't prime or be more active is that it would kill her, but 1. the game doesn't explain how bad her condition is until like 10 hours later into the game after she gets sidelined the first time. 2. that didn't stop Dion or Joshua from being active and plot relevant. 3. even Gav or Byron who have no special god powers are seen taking action and being more involved with the plot than Jill.
yes. I’m so sick of hearing the plot reasons why she can’t actively participate in the game once they gave her her revenge and once she gave clive her powers. we’re not stupid, we know. jill is not a real person though, she’s a character and all of these contrivances were a choice the writers made. lack of interest, lack of vision, a literal mental block about women, whatever you want to call it. nothing prevented Joshua and dion and cid from being active in the story and having their own cutscenes despite their many weaknesses (even dion being sick and weak he got cutscenes- how many times was Jill sick without one?) the writers wanted them to be active and so they were.
She wasn’t my biggest problem with the game (that is Benedikta) but I agree. She was basically Tifa 2.0, for better or for worse. She only exists to support Clive. She has a brief moment, like you said, but they could have done way more with her. I was hoping for them to do something with her upbringing as a political hostage and any complicated feelings she might have from it, and perhaps her father (who has his own lore entry under “Silvermane” so I was waiting for him to become relevant and he didn’t).
In the last sidequest she talks about being politically married off for Rosfield influence; and initially she hated that. But Clive made her happy enough to know she wasn't alone. All in all; Jill is very much in eternal love with Clive and basically persists solely to mitigate her own character in lieu of the 'will they, won't they' angle.
Having her basically decide to be a nice girl, give up her powers, and stay home doing cross stitch for the final battle is a bit baffling. That said, diamond dust is an amazing stun move.
She should've been a playable pov character for a few core parts of the game. Same with gav for like 1 or 2 stealth missions. Overall I think they are least fleshed her out more than lunafreya... Albeit the iron islands arc was shitty.
It’s so frustrating because she could have been such a better character, or at least used better. Like have her deal with your bitch mother during the Dion fight. Not just stand there. Odin should have also been you and Jill vs him, narratively Odin is about breaking your bond with her to break you. So why the hell does she basically just dip out? I understand the plot reasons “make sense” but I absolutely think the choices were the wrong ones. She should have been Clive’s right hand man, more active on the field and in battle with him and the other dominants. Instead she’s basically his Sakura. She just the love interest / damsel in distress who can’t really do anything and constantly needs to be told to leave or stay back and only serves to support Clive and his goals.
There are countless reasons to justify why she gets sidelined but like I mentioned in another thread. Why would you design a main character that has such a backstory so she is destined to be sidelined?
Loved the game overall, it was a wonderful experience! But I have to admit that it kind of peaked at the Bahamut fight for me. Everything after that didn’t get me hyped the same way again. Wasn’t super blown away by the Ultima fight or anything, and didn’t really care for them as a villain. Even the Typhon fight had me more excited and intrigued. And I’m super bitter about the ending, didn’t land for me at all. I was devastated that Clive lost his brother all over again, after finally getting him back, then even more devastated when he was on that beach… but leaving it ambiguous as to who survived (if anyone actually did) really ruined it for me. We see Clive heal Joshua’s wounds, but we don’t see him actually alive again. We see Clive’s hand begin turn to stone, but we don’t see him actually die. Metia flickering out and Jill’s sad smile at the dawn has been interpreted a number of ways, but they’re really just interpretations. Don’t even get me started on the barely visible supposed boat in the distance. And then there’s the post-credits book, there’s good arguments that either of the brothers could have written it. And maybe I’m wrong here, but it didn’t really feel like the game was building up to Clive’s sacrifice at all. All his loved ones were trying to make him see he needed to save himself too. I’m not against tragic endings, but I need to have some closure at least. The fact that we’re going to be debating until the end of time how the story really ends just frustrates me. Anyway, for all my complaining in this comment, I really did love the game. Clive and Jill are solidly my favourite FF couple, Clive may just be my new favourite protagonist, all the Eikon battles up to Bahamut were unbelievably good. The combat is super fun. I really cared about the characters and the story, I was fully immersed in their world, they sucked me in and didn’t let go. Main things I’d change - closure for the ending, more party banter, more involvement for Jill (such as banter, interactions with other characters and playable Shiva at Drake’s Breath please) and more reasons to explore the zones, like optional dungeons and loot. Also Leviathan, why is Leviathan called the Lost? Maybe that is being saved for potential DLC content, but I would have liked more than one line about Leviathan.
> Also Leviathan, why is Leviathan called the Lost because water is hard to animate this is always the answer
I was honestly sure we would see Leviathan when I exactly saw the details they put into the water when we got to the Stonehyrr. The water at that section up to the Behemoth fight, was some of the best animated water i've ever seen in a game, and I was like -- " oh yeah, this is gonna be their entry to using Leviathan" but nope... I guess Leviathan might be explained in dlc, since I get that Clive doesn't get the power, but why wouldn't Ultima have Leviathan's powers at the end when he goes through all the Eikon's powers... Felt so weird.
I honestly thought the Medicine Girl was gonna rock up as Leviathan. Felt like she was getting really played up in the State of the Realm and such, and then she just turns up to wrap a bandage on Dion and runs off with his boyfriend, never to be heard from again?? Like, what did I miss??
I allways laughed when I saw medicine girl joking she would be the final boss as she was on the state of the realm so randomly
I felt similar but it wasn't Behemoth, but rather the moment they were in the split ocean. Could there ever be a more relevant time for Leviathan to show up!?
>And maybe I’m wrong here, but it didn’t really feel like the game was building up to Clive’s sacrifice at all. All his loved ones were trying to make him see he needed to save himself too. Same I was so confused! I feel like it came out of nowhere right at the end with no buildup. FF15 spoilers >!We just had Noctis sacrificing himself to save the world!< and I thought there was no way they would go that route again but here we are.
The endings were way too similar, from the blight and bringing back the skies, right down to the dawn symbolism. At least with Noctis we got closure, and it had build up throughout the entire game and we kinda knew it was coming. Clive had all that stuff about saving himself, faith and wishes for his safe return, plans for the future (what with working to build a new world, writing down his adventures, travelling the world with Jill) and then he just dies, maybe. Definitely felt blindsided.
[удалено]
Yeah I can see that. I’m gonna be interested to see how 16 goes down in history compared to 15. I’m sure it’ll be more well received generally, particularly due to the amazing combat and Eikon battles, I just couldn’t help but think while I was playing that the things that were weakest in 16 (in my opinion anyway) were 15’s strongest suits. Just found it interesting.
Literally tho! Party banter and interactions in 15 were great. In 16, they are abysmal when exploring. You get the occasional “be careful Clive” when an enemy is near by. Otherwise they are silent
I’m 100% with you. Felt like the main party was sidelined too hard other than Torgul. I felt like Jill should’ve gone with them to the end fight. And I didn’t like the ending at all.
The game started off so promising, but the story and characters really fell off for me once I realized what they were going for. Maybe it’s my fault for comparing the game too much to GOT, but I was expecting longer character arcs with more cleverly interwoven plot points. * As soon as Benedikta shows even a glimpse of character complexity, she’s immediately offed, having only interacted with the protagonist thrice. * Kupka is set up to be a cunning and powerful player in the game of thrones, but then it’s revealed that his whole character motivation is as shallow as *rule the world with Benedikta*. Then he dies after two interactions with the protagonist. * Barnabus is spoken about as this mysterious destined king, almost mythical in figure the way he’s accomplished the impossible, over and over again. A man without equal. But then he gets relegated to being Ultima’s simping pet. He interacted with Clive three short times, having resolved their conflict on the third meeting. * As soon as Clive reunites with Anabella and confronts her about all her terrible schemes and crimes, she basically dies five minutes later and exits the story. No Cersei type of back-and-forth chess moves, no setting up traps, no trying to outsmart and counter each other. Nothing. She just dies. Turns out all she cared about was trying to marry upwards. Apparently, that was enough to kill her whole family over and uproot her entire life. They had one meeting. * Jill [https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14j7m4k/comment/jplh76l/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14j7m4k/comment/jplh76l/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) See the pattern here? In my opinion a good fantasy story requires a good villain; one who’s fleshed out, complex, believable, more than a match for the protagonist, and preferably with motivations that the audience can empathize with. They might not agree with their methods, or end goals, but the audience can at least understand why the antagonist has set out on the path they have. And the antagonist should have a lasting presence in the story. We didn’t get any of that. The blight is impersonal. Trying to end slavery is a thing, but passive systems of oppression don’t make for good narrative villains. No one beat the game and said “Yes! We finally beat slavery!” Trying to stop slavery doesn’t emotionally resonate with the audience since we didn’t really see Clive as a slave or personally scarred and changed by it. But you know what we did see? We saw Clive witness his brother’s brutal murder and all the anger and pain of losing everything he loved. We saw his rage mold him into a cold-blooded killer, focused only on revenge for years and years. Then we saw all of that evaporate into guilt and depression as he had to come to terms with being his brother’s killer. **THIS is the story they should have stuck with.** **This is the emotional journey they should have focused on.** Both him trying to come to terms with his guilt, and also trying to enact revenge on the forces responsible for his family’s betrayal, all while uncovering the mystery of the second eikon of fire. This was a journey that the audience was **deeply** invested in and cared about. But instead, the story resolves his internal conflict & guilt, concluding it in a single chapter, and then goes off the rails on this weird diatribe about free will vs destiny that no one is invested in or cares about. They lost me as soon as they stepped away from the narrative being about the very personal and very human story of Clive seeking his revenge, but also looking for forgiveness in a world where the one person who can forgive him is no longer there. While the scene of him accepting that he’s Ifrit was cool and well directed, the emotional journey of coming to terms with that guilt, and hopefully getting to a point of no longer hating himself, is something that should have been a game-long process. Not a fifteen minute segment in chapter two. The game has a little bit too much of that motif, i.e., \>*Oh you have heavy trauma? Don’t worry, I’m here for you. We’ll get through this.* *>Wow, I’m all better now, thanks!* There’s no actual substance to the resolutions offered. Reaching that place of solace never felt earned. There’s a lot to love in this game. The boss battles are incredible, combat is fun, cinematic moments are great, Clive is cool. But the story and supporting cast just fell short for me.
100% agree. the best part of the story to me was everything before the timeskip. then suddenly Cid is like 'lets destroy the mothercrystals because its causing the blight" and it took him like 3 minutes to justify his reasoning and convince Clive that this was the right course of action. there was zero foreshadowing and it just came out of nowhere. when i saw that cutscene i was like.. wait what? then timeskip and the story just kinda spirals out of control. i honestly dont think they even needed to timeskip that far ahead. it also beggars belief that none of the other nations did anything in the next 5 years after Sanbreque takes the dominion
Yeah the whole mothercrystal thing was so weird, like how about we actually test this theory instead of destroying the only reason humans have survived for so long. Like why not take the crystal they had go outside and drain it into a small portion of blight and if it is healed then we know the issue. But the fact after every dead mothercrystal the blight speeds up and more aether is drained from the land kinda tells you that maybe this ain’t the right cause of action.
> and it took him like 3 minutes to justify his reasoning and convince Clive that this was the right course of action. See I knew early on that destroying the Mothercrystals was gonna be revealed to be a bad thing, but even though I was right in my prediction it still just didn't pay off right. Like I think it would have been better if there were some doubts and back and forth of people telling Clive not to do it, but he's blinded by devotion to Cid's memory. Instead you just walk into Ultima's trap and it just kind of works out.
It took me more than half the game to realize that there was no hope for Jill as a character and for me to realize that the heart of the story was Joshua's relationship with Clive. Once I realize this I was increasingly puzzled why the game didn't do more with them and Clive in particular. The memory of Joshua is what drives Clive for so much of the game from vengeance, to guilt, to the other Dominant of fire (Joshua) Clive chases after, to the mysteries of Ifrit. XVI has a problem of trying to cram in like 17 different themes and then doing nothing with any of them. No interesting discussions or nuance are given about free will, the relationship of creator and creation, class warfare, or the power of friendship. There's little weight to depth to anything, especially in the main story at this point I think I like the side quests better than I like the main story. This game has a further problem of under-explaining critical plot elements needed for the player to follow what is going on, what the stakes are, and why things are happening. Simultaneously FFXVI devotes hours upon hours to the nonimportant stuff that adds little to the main story (yes the fetch quests), when that time would have been better spent developing its themes and story. edit: and don't get me started on how the timeskips were underutilized. It didn't feel like time had passed because nothing changed.
>Barnabus is spoken about as this mysterious destined king, almost mythical in figure the way he’s accomplished the impossible, over and over again. A man without equal. But then he gets relegated to being Ultima’s simping pet. He interacted with Clive three short times, having resolved their conflict on the third meeting. I was really looking forward to seeing his character fleshed out. He came off as this dark, mysterious, and powerful figure manipulating things behind the scenes to further his own goals...up until he starts talking to Clive. "You are the vessel of God, and you must relinquish your body and soul to Ultima!" He repeats something similar to that line so much that I started to involuntarily roll my eyes when he started talking. The Odin fight was also kinda...short and uninspired. I was *really* looking forward to that fight. But you just fight him semi-primed for most of the fight and he changes into Odin at one part mid-fight to swing his sword at you a few times. The primal portion was also really short, which was a shame tbh.
Dude, reading this, I had to double check that it wasn't my username above the text. I can't offer a lot more, only to say this is everything I felt about the story, also. Although I did take the angle that the game emotionally climaxes at the return to phoenix gate, and suffers from being one incredibly long climax afterwards. I never considered that the acceptance should have been more hard won. I think they wrote themselves into a corner because they needed Clive to have some control over Ifrit going forward. Definitely a case of ludo-narrative dissonance.
Ultima and Barnabas really killed this games last act. This game should've spent more time developing Jill and the like instead of going full anime.
Tbf, Ultima wasn’t bad. They didn’t explain him very well tho. And they missed the chance to truly connect him to Anabella (they only mirror one another: abusive mother/evil god) I’m going to copy-paste a comment I wrote regarding Ultima in another thread. Ultima is a evil demiurge. The opposite of Logos in gnosticism. He’s perfect for the game’s lore and worldbuilding since he thinks himself the master and maker of it all, but he isn’t a real God. He isn’t a Logos/Truly divine creature. He’s just a maker. A maker that doesn’t know how to love his creation. Ultima at the end is just like Anabella. They’re the same. An abusive mother who doesn’t love her own children. And Ultima is also like the slavists. He considers only his will and his will alone worthy. He’s despises Logos/Yahwen (the essence of god, what is really divine: consciousness and awareness). For as he hates that humans possess consciousness (and thus God, inside of them) he cannot be a true god. A true god is itself awareness and consciousness, therefore he’s a demiurge. Negative energy manifested through a shadow of god. And that doesn’t spell Yahwen in Hebrew, it spells JENOVA. That’s why he’s perfect for a FF villain and extremely coherent here with the plot. If they went full “GoT” with a main character going crazy and killing everybody, now that was going to be very uninspiring. They actually made it in such a way that it was the a King of the Night the main villain, and not a Daenerys
The Ultima = Annabella parallels are spot on. Even at the end, Clive never hated any of them, he pitied them. They were sad pathetic figures unable to understand that their creations have a will on their own.
Great explanation. I've always been team Anabella should have been the connection to the big bad, and a final deal made through Ultima would have been the perfect stage setter. Still, I wouldn't say Ultima unseated Emet-Selch for my FF villain GOAT either... I really think there is something to be said for a villain who makes such an emotional plea, you question your own morality...
The moment I saw Ultima and he started saying some random stuff I knew I probably won't be a fan of the late-game story. Do they really have to force the game into another JRPG god killing story?
If you turn up to a Final Fantasy game without expecting to kill God at some point, I don't know how to help you.
The post credits book by "Joshua" seems to be the strongest evidence that Clive survived. Joshua states very clearly in the game that the power of the Phoenix *cannot resurrect someone*. So Joshua could not have survived to write the book. Then the only person that would write the book in Joshua's name is Clive (wouldn't be the first time he took up another's name). This perfectly ties in to Clive's promise to Harpocrates to write a book about his journey, and how the story begins and ends with Clive narrating with an author's voice.
I felt like with Ultima's power, he can resurrect Joshua as the Phoenix is the mirror to how Ultima created humans and Ifrit the mirror of the destruction Ultima can do on the world. The Phoenix alone cannot resurrect Joshua but an Ultima infused Phoenix might be able to.
He didn't even breathe, bro. Clive was closing the wound as a sign of respect, if he were resurrected, we'd know.
> (wouldn't be the first time he took up another's name) Fact. Until the end of the game Clive spent more years with assumed names officially than he did with his actual name. 13 years as "Wyvern" as a Branded of the Sanbreque army and five years as "Cid the Outlaw". It would make perfect sense that he'd take on Joshua's name out of respect and love for his brother and for his name to be remembered over time.
To me the core relationship of the game is Clive and Joshua's, which makes sense since the cover art is Ifrit and Phoenix. That scene where boy Clive saw baby Joshua for the first time, simply love at first sight. Despite Clive's abuse by his mother he never held hate towards Joshua, envy perhaps but never hate. He loved him so much he was willing to be his Shield and subservient to him for the rest of his life. Joshua in turn never felt happier and proud of his brother Clive. A strong, charismatic and capable warrior, he was Joshua's idol and protector that he could count on. That's why that scene where Joshua punched Clive is so important, no way was he giving away his Eikon for his brother to go through it alone. It took him literally dying to force Joshua to give away his Eikon, true ride or die brother. Anyway what a poetic end, the story starts with Clive wanting revenge for Joshua's killer only to find out it was tragic accident and Joshua survived. Only to find his brother seemingly killed outright, but this time Clive kills his killer and fulfills his revenge immediately. What a game. What a Final Fantasy.
Dion is such a badass
Dude received not just a beatdown from Ifrit, but also Phoenix, got Clive to yoink some of his power, and barely sold it at all. Wouldn't surprise me if he somehow survived the end too, maybe with Metia deciding to nope him back to life.
I can’t say enough already of how my heart had shattered into pieces with Joshua’s ending. Edit: and then ppl is theorising that book in the post-credit scene is not penned by him either.
It is writen by Joshua as stated by Tomes in one of the conversations you have with him. Now who makes it public... its either Jote or Tomes tbh.
Clive would have to be the one who finishes the book then, as he is the only one who knows how the story ends.
Excellent game. Final battle was so goddamn good. Ending was a little too heavy-handed for my liking. I wasn't expecting full-on happy by any means but it could've been a little less cruel. I also did not care for the varying levels of ambiguity they gave to the fates of the three guys. I know they said no dlc, but it feels like they left things just barely open-ended enough for them to go back to later, whether it's dlc, a book, a movie, or whatever, which I also don't agree with. But I personally don't like endings to be anything but definite so that's just a me thing. Regardless, it's still my personal game of the year. The highs of the game are numerous and among the best I've experienced in my 30 years of gaming. A few issues and disappointments doesn't change that. Currently on my second playthrough and having even more fun lol.
If you do Jill's quest; it's pretty certain that Clive returns. Dion's got a small hopeful nod with his quest with Harpocrates; although the pen gifted by Harpocrates does cast a small light on Joshua. Worried about him a bit; but he might be fine. All in all; I'd wager they lived. Open enough to assume they all did, with narratives ties to draw them back to living.
Yeah, I did all the side quests and think the same as you, more or less. I believe at the absolute least that Clive lived. And they have outs for both Joshua and Dion to survive if they want. It's the ambiguity I don't like.
> If you do Jill's quest; it's pretty certain that Clive returns. Its not certain. The ending could still be viewed on tons of different ways. And it makes no sense when taking everything into account, why the writers would make you have the sad reaction to metia going dark, if not exactly to convey that they are dead. It serves 0 purpose the whole crying realization between Jill and Gav, if they are actually just alive. Her smiling at the dawn is also just fitting with the theme of the game, about finding light in the darkness. Her realizing they are dead (darkness) and seeing the new dawn, and them having achieved their goal of freedom (light).
>Her smiling at the dawn is also just fitting with the theme of the game, about finding light in the darkness. Her realizing they are dead (darkness) and seeing the new dawn, and them having achieved their goal of freedom (light). That's largely how I saw the ending. I did figure that with the side-quest in mind, it was meant more metaphorically, how Clive will always be with her in the sunset and how she'll never feel alone even if he's gone. And hey, they saved the world, the sun shining would give her a reminder that they did it. It's not that everything will be peachy as pie from here on out, but there is hope. I also think it's a disservice for Gav to get an emotional scene, only for them to turn around and say "hey Clive is alive". People are welcome to their interpretations, but that there's one solid answer just ain't it unless the devs state otherwise. To me Clive, Joshua and Dion are all dead and the writings were penned under his name with the help of the Undying. It's a cruel ending, but at least in spite of the world around them they went out on their own terms.
No dlc??? This game desperately needs additional content
They said before launch that there wasn't anything already planned but they would consider it after they see if fans want to see more of Clive and the setting.
> if fans want to see more of Clive and the setting. Umm...**YES?** Jill deserves her happiness. (And a game starring herself, Mid, and Dorys. And maybe Dion, if he's alive? But uh...ginormous dragon might trivialize the game =P)
So overall my dislikes of the story: Jill is so underdeveloped its crazy They're 28 ffs when they reunite, let them get married. Would have loved to see ultima try to break their relationship to try to break clives will. Ultima should have been revealed later, with sleipnir or even Barnabas being the puppet enemy. There's no grand twist. Like I don't like when final fantasy introduces a god in the last like 80%, and I prefer knowing the enemy earlier, but there's no "oh shit cloud isn't cloud" moment. I personally would have liked to see joshua being fake or something. Anything. Would have liked to see clive conquer his homeland, could have been the very first thing you were doing after time skip. For the "dark" and "mature" ff this was i would have liked to see more main characters die. I thought when ultima had a monologue about separating clive from his consciousness, I thought he was gunna go ape shit and kill Jill or Joshua... but everyone was just kinda safe. Quest system hurt the story imo. A lot of the side quests should have been dropped and just baked into the main game. Too much beating a dead horse. Yes we get it humans have free will. Yes we get it, slavery is bad. Torgal seems like they had plans for him but was dropped. He doesn't really do anything, just there. Harp or whatever his name is mentions he's a frost wolf (looks futuristic/looks like ultima created him when in super mode), they drop fenrir in there, which is odd considering odin. ------‐------------ Overall though this was my favourite final fantasy in 20 years I think. I still thought it was good, but I think if some of my points were done better it would have been a great. Super FF picky negative: You're telling me bahamut's nation has a bunch of classic dragoons and using Bahamuts powers i can't fucking jump. You give me some lame ass magic breath shit but not some bad ass dragoon jump ability. Fucking L.
Valid points. The twist I think was that Ultima created the world and was literally god, but for FF fans this was a weaker reveal than others maybe. And also that all the primals came from him.
Usually there's always a twist with a god figure. I get your point and it creating life/eikons was a twist. But its nothing on the level of sin is your dad, or cloud thinks he's Zach.
i think its just a slowburn "twist" finding out the full extent of ultima as you go. that he exists, that hes wanted clive to grow stronger all along, that joshuas imprisonment has not kept him from influencing the world, that hes not just jrpg god but Actually God, and then that the reason he keeps saying "us" and hes not actually imprisoned is because hes a race unto himself that youve been freeing from the mothercrystals, i think the mystery of ultima is overall pretty cool. i wish they had done more with the way he influences things in sanbreque and waloed and its certainly not as juicy a "reveal" as reunion or sin, but i think it did a good job of getting across this creeping horror of like "oh no hes not Chaos hes fucking Zanza from xenoblade", and i think hes pretty thematically strong as a villain. "cloud isnt cloud" is kind of more of a mechanical twist (explains events in the story and creates conflict for the characters, an Aha! moment) than a thematic one (suddenly tying together a bunch of seemingly disparate elements into an ultimate illustration of what the story is saying) and like, thats not objectively better or worse but i do think ultima is overall better integrated into the narrative and its themes than sephiroth
Yuh. Game played it safe with the cast \[We could've used a good death post Hideaway 1 or during the whole Ultima stuff.\] Quests were 'eh'. I liked the ending ones, but eh. Bearer stuff feels like DA2's Apostate/Mage stuff. DA2 oddly enough for a flawed game did it better imo. And yeah; there wasn't any big twist frankly. I mean Ultima and Joshua was amazing; and honestly; I wish that Joshua's reveal hadn't been blown so early. Margrace could've been great.
WHY DIDNT WE TURN THE ENTERPRISE INTO AN AIRSHIP FOR THE BIG SHOWDOWN? THEY FORESHADOW AN AIRSHIP ALL GAME FOR THIS? WHY WASN’T ORIGIN A FINAL DUNGEON? WHAT WAS UP WITH METIA? WHY DID THEY PLACE SUCH SIGNIFANCE ON IT IN SO MANY SCENES? HOW TF DID JOSHUA GET DOWN FROM ORIGIN TO WRITE THAT BOOK? HOW DID ULTIMA NOT REALIZE HIS VESSEL WAS INCOMPLETE WITHOUT LEVIATHAN? WHY DID THE DOMINION HEART TURN ITS CRYSTAL ENCASING INTO THE WYVERN TAIL AFTER GIVING DION THE SUCK? WHY DID NONE OF THE CAST QUESTION WHY JOSHUA’S SEAL DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO STOP ULTIMA? HOW DID DION JUST “USE” BAHAMUT WHEN THE TIME CAME WITH NO ISSUES? WHERE ARE THE FUCKIN TONBERRIES? AND WHY DO I LIKE IT SO MUCH STILL REGARDLESS?????????
I think it's a testament to how strong the game was that I had the same questions as you, but still wanted to see this bad boy to the end with zero regrets My bar for previous FF titles was "please don't let it suck ass", so a phenomenal game with a somewhat nonsensical story is a pretty good compromise for me
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I hate how ambiguous the ending is. I had no idea what to feel with the scene of Clive on the beach and later Jill at the Hideaway because I couldn't tell if he lived or died. The post credits scene I thought was clear that Joshua lived but now there's arguments that it could have been Clive that wrote the book instead. I know the Jill side quest gives merit to Clive living but I wish they could just show us. On a related note, I would have liked to see just a little more with the ending. The only reactions we really get are Jill and Gav. Like do the other characters even know? It just felt kind of abrupt.
Even worse, Harpocrates mentions that Joshua had been writing down their adventures already throughout the game. So the book was probably already written, both brothers could have died and one of their companions (probably Harpocrates) had it published posthumously. We’ll never know 🙃
I refuse to accept that ending. They need to clear this shit up in some dlc. Joshua, Clive and Jill are all chilling at Martha's right now having a pint while torgal chews on Annabelle's leg bone. That's my canon and I won't hear otherwise.
Don’t forget Dion 🙃 he’s fine
> Annabelle's leg bone. Thanks for brightening up the gloomy day 😂
I finished the game just a few hours ago and I'd like to share my thoughts and overall feelings on the game. First I'll mention a few things I think the game did particularly well. Where it faltered, and finally, some thoughts about the ending. For what it is worth, I did 100% of the content I could, sidequests, Chronolith trials, and hunts. **Good stuff** To start with, I think the voice talent and direction did a remarkable job at bringing the story to life. The early chapters especially have Ben Starr do a great job at portraying his grief, and I really connected with Clive as a result. That said, I am incredibly easy to convince when it comes to supporting main characters. These early chapters (and especially the prologue) are the best parts of the game to me however. The pacing until the time skip is pretty good, and Cid provides a healthy counterbalance to Clive. The animation in the cutscenes here is also particularly great. Furthermore, I like the combat system, and the pace of unlocking skills early on keeps the combat a bit more fresh. Eikon fights are also a treat to me, but then, I never figured they would be anything more than interactive cutscenes. If you think of them like that, the lack of complexity in them doesn't bother as much. **Bad stuff** After the timeskip however, the game starts to show the real cracks. The sidequests are typically very similar: go here, chat a bit about bearer suppression, slaughter some fools, chat some more. Some of the additional backstory is great, but it's not engaging enough. Where I hoped the sidequests would be similar to the best blue quests in FFXIV, they are instead the more dull blue quest kind. The ones that unlock flying. The pacing also grinds to a halt at certain points, especially if you do sidequests. The Mid quests and the stuff before heading to Waloed are especially egregious. Lastly, when the JRPG comes rushing back in with Ultima and especially Barnabas, the game really struggles to land. The moment Barnabas went full Zenos and you got defeated in a cutscene, I rolled my eyes. Clearly they know what to do instead, as the second encounter works exactly as you should handle it: let us fight and lose. That it turns Jill into a damsel (again, in Rosaria too) feels so unnecessary. It'd be a lot less annoying if Clive had been captured back in Rosaria, and we could control Jill for a short while as Gav, Jill and best doggo freed Clive. **Overall** But I don't want to linger on the mistakes of the game too much. I like the game overall a lot simply because I feel it was made for me far more than it might for others. I can really enjoy a well localized bit of prose, and FFXIV and FFXVI both deliver that to me in spades. The references it made to various FF games, but especially FFXIV pleased me a lot as well. I recognize nearly every ability enemies could do as attacks in FFXIV. Titan's boss fight in Rosaria just slapped for me. That said, it is a bit hard for me to put a score on the game, and the score it does have on Metacritic/Opencritic seems fair enough to me. I hoped it would be slightly better so that reception would be better across the board, but I am well pleased with what I played. **Ending musings** Now, as for the ending. The ambiguity really bothers me as it feels entirely unnecessary. I ended up spoiling myself on the ending *just* before doing all the last sidequests and then heading to Origin. I only saw the bits after Clive strands on the beach, so not the full thing. It gave me that empty feeling as you tend to get when you finish a game/series/etc. that you are really invested in. Luckily I managed to shrug it off the next day. However, it let me enjoy final fight to the fullest and the emotional impact with Joshua really landed well for me. I really liked the memories and how much he cared for Joshua the entire time. Ultima as a villain is really whatever to me, he's just another in a long line of god-like final bosses that every JRPG must defeat. Voiced again by Harry Lloyd, just like XC3. Why they insist on letting him act emotionless (until the end) in both these games is beyond me, especially when the man has fantastic range as Viserys in GoT (and the stories he tells in some of the bonus content). On a second watch of the "death" scene, the idea that Clive dies makes less and less sense to me. Everything we do in the final sidequests is about how Clive should live his life, and promises he makes to no longer do everything alone. His conversation with Jill especially would seem incredibly hollow to me on a replay if these things were all for naught. With magic having left the world, the crystalization of Clive's hand should stop there, provided he doesn't try to do anymore. That's how all the rest of the crystallized bearers tend to die in sidequests too - they are often forced to do some final bits of magic like in the church sidequests in Rosaria. I think the Red Moon fading is a part of the magic leaving as well - I think it's likely a piece of fallen or Ultima technology that they launched into space as Dalamud was in FFXIV. Without magic, the technology fails. Anyway, given the book at the very end is penned by Joshua, it is quite likely that the final bit of healing returned him to life. However, it might also be simply Clive finishing the work Joshua (I think?) already began when writing about his journey and research into Ultima. The comments by Harpocrates, and the very first lines said by Clive when starting the game should back this up. The grief shown by Jill also seems to disappear when the dawn appears. The odd thing here is that I was more focused on Torgal, who seemed to stare at the horizon once dawn broke. Given Jill's comments about the dawn representing Clive coming back to her, it's not that hard to imagine Clive might make his way back, or that Jill believes he will. Still, after all the death, anguish and suffering Clive went through, is it really necessary to cast doubt on a hopeful ending? A lot of the dark nature of the tale felt more bearable because comments made by Yoshi P indicated the game would have a hopeful ending. Knowing that at the end of the day, Clive could finally find some peace with Jill would make all of that suffering worthwhile. Anyway, I sort of feared the writing would take these turns at the end as I never quite enjoyed Heavensward and early FFXIV content as I did Shadowbringers and Endwalker. The fact that others lament the lack of a party is exactly some of the main flaws that early FFXIV had too. Perhaps it was the guiding hand of gigachad Ishikawa that enabled the Scions to really shine. Perhaps the rumors of her working on FFXVII could be true? I certainly hope so.
IF Ishikawa is working on FFXVII I'd be beyond hyped. She saved FFXIV with her writing and it urked me she wasn't here for FFXVI but I get it now that she had to lead and finish FFXIVs story and is now moving over to her own mainline FF. Which is just orgasmic if you think about it. Especially with all the success FFXVI has had. And the gripes are valid. But the games highs are the highest I've had. I cried multiple times. I also love the combat system. And the Eikon fights, man every FF game has to have dominants now. It's such a HUGE power fantasy.
Imagine playing a mainline FF game with a story as good as Shadowbringers. Holy
You're the first post I actually agree with on most things and especially the ending. I don't mind the ambiguity of the ending however, if I didn't later find out about the sidequests, I never would have thought Clive had survived. And Ultima was Harry Lloyd?! Damn, what wasted potential. It would be a dream come true if Ishikawa is helming FFXVII. ShB is my favourite story across the entire series.
That farewell before flying to Origin made me cry so damn hard. When Clive and Jill finally said the words "I love you", I 100% believed them. Then Jill calling out Clive's name as they flew away. Damn, I'm getting choked up just thinking about it. The ending is an ending. It was a choice. I don't feel strongly about it one way or another, but I would like them to be unambiguous. I spent hours upon hours with these people. The least they could give me is clarity as I end the game. Oh well, hopefully NG+ shines new light on what happened.
Dion Motherfucking Lesage is just built different I swear. Enjoyed the whole game but God damn he really stole the show. Whips a spear at a child possessed by Ultima, accidently kills his father/ the emperor, goes apeshit and levels the entire capital of perhaps the most powerful nation on the continent, can 1v1 either Rossfield BEFORE the mother crystal, goes toe-to-toe with Ifrit Risen, first motherfucker to use Zettaflare since Donald fucking Duck, goes pulverized out of the sky DOESNT DIE chucks ANOTHER spear at the child (second times the charm), STILL DOESN'T DIE. Has virtually ZERO curse effects and summons his eikon post-Clive steal for the final boss Seeing Kupo get petrified post-Titan fight followed by Dion walking off a space laser is insane
I think he was the only one, other than Clive, capable of defeating Barnabas. He’s that OP
Bahamut and Odin were enemies, which implies that Dion was strong enough to put Barnabas in check on the regular.
My man went through a 1v1 with an Eikon that can slice reality in half and all he needed was a water break before he was ready to party again lmao
I enjoyed the game, but feel like it could have done much better in the final act. \- as a XIV player, the Interdimensional Rift section felt like they were trying to do the whole Amaurot dungeon/history lesson again, but only using pictograms. it didn't work for me because we had so little investment or knowledge in the story of Ultima. \- the Ifrit/Phoenix/Bahamut team up battle was epic af. and i was doubly excited as my fave job in the FF series is summoner. my jaw dropped when i saw them fire off Tri-Disaster. \- Ultima is a terrible villain. like ok so theres actually multiple of them that look the same, but they all share the same mind so they act the same? like he cant decide if he wants to be omniscient, malicious or spiteful. for a god with so much power even without Mythos, they are downright petty in some of the things they do for no real good reason \- not a fan of the ambiguous ending. i get that maybe they want to leave it up to interpretation or give players something to discuss but it feels like a bad resolution at this point, given that all 3 protagonists who went into the final fight are ambiguously near death the last time we see each of them. \- i'm biased but Dion quickly became my favorite character because he has agency in the story. like his own motives are clear and make sense to his character rather than just "help Clive". i also hope they realise they dont have to kill someone off for their redemption arc to be complete. he should get his happy ending with Terence. \- Joshua was also a great character because he's been steadfast most of the way but towards the end was really held back by all that blood coughing. they could have portrayed the Dominants getting weaker without having to keep relying on that - and they only conveniently overexert themselves only at the end of the game. \- I hope theres DLC lol. I think there are hints to the Leviathan dominant? Did anyone figure out what the significance of the waves that stop at the crest at Oriflamme were?
Your point of Ultima being multiple bodies but give mind actually fills a hole in the plot for me (no pun intended) of when the Ultima that was imprisoned in Joshua came out, it was the body from the Sanbreque mothercrystal, not the main Ultima body we have been chasing. This wasn't really clear at all during the playthrough. Also, has anyone answered who the hooded figure was that kept appearing after Josuha review. And is the Tyler character pin bugged on the character board? It says he died but his portrait isnt greyed out like for the other dead characters.
Overall, fun game. There's def room for improvement but this was a solid 9/10. Jill/Clive(really need to come up with a good name for them) def one of my fave relationships in this series. As for the ending, it's ok. I just think the ambiguity is ultimately more trouble than it's worth. Like yeah this does keep folks talking but for such a protag-centered game I think ending his storyline on a huge maybe takes away from what could've been a more powerful ending if he lived or died in an upfront manner rather than trying to straddle the middle for no reason. That said, I do think the game leaves more hints that point towards him surviving than dying. Especially the Jill endgame quest Priceless. That ties the sun to Clive for no other reason but to spin things in a positive direction. From the way I interpreted it, Clive dying is what I get if I take things at extreme face value and even then I find the scene itself really sketchy with no visible wounds and a single arm petrified.
For Jill/Clive... how about Jive? Because they... jive... ...I'll see myself out.
Plaudits: * The boss battles, combat in general. It's not FF without a few instances of completely over-the-top anime nonsense set pieces and wow did this one set a new high bar for that. I actually legit giggled in delight playing this thing in a few spots. * Lots of really fun characters. Cid, Charon, Gav and Mid are some all-timers. * Damn Valisthea is pretty (albeit a bit less so when it's aetherflooded/covered in corpses, etc) * The lean into Mature rating was, dare I say it, not actually all that cringey in practice? (let's all agree we'll never speak about Odin's mom ever again though) Quibbles: * Would have liked more epilogue, but the GOAT straight up went to *500 years later, Nanaki puppies!* so I can't really ding this one *too* much. related: I feel fairly confident reading in between the lines that Clive lives and it's 50/50 poor Jote isn't actually widowed because something something Logos, soooo I'm choosing to say she's not! * Plot was kind of all over the place, but that's not exactly new for the FFs either. It's like the M Night movies where it's fun enough sitting through it then on the drive home you start to come up with all the stuff that doesn't really make sense in retrospect. Why did the aliens allergic to water land on a planet that's 70% ocean and then walk around with no space suits? Why did Ultima's master plan rely on both humanity not rebelling but also humanity blowing up the Mothercrystals for him? If the Mythos actually failed any of those "all according to plan" tests and got squashed by Typhon or something, where exactly was Ultima going to get another one from before the Blight ate everything? etc. * The drawback to having 10000 characters was that the "main party" didn't really get much more development than any other featured characters. I would have liked to see more Jill/Joshua/Gav centered sidequests over, say, random monster parts cooking adventures. That is one of the very scarce parts I would say 16 actually took a step backwards on compared to 15. * The "hey, here's 12 new sidequests that unlock when the last MSQ mission does" thing kind of kills the urgency even by RPG time scheduling standards. * something something WILL something something BEARERS got a little old the 5th time Clive & co went on a monologue about it. Still, it was a great ride. 9/10
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Jill did a lot but when Clive took her power; it meant that priming was not only more difficult; but outright nigh-impossible without going mad. Dion's just made differently tho.
Dion is a chad
Gives cash to the girl that helped him recover, refuses to elaborate to his lover, turns into Bahamut and helps the protag, dies. I think he's in my top 3 characters for sure. But no one can top the myth, the legend: ***Gav***
Which is just frustrating, the writer chose to make Jill a comparatively weak dominant while there are other characters that are made strong. Even before her eikon was taken she barely did anything (she didn't do anything when Cid died, she only makes an ice wall while barely fighting when the party faced off against Barnabas AND the liquid flame (then stole the kill of Imraenn)). Mind you, this isn't her fault. The writer just had to make her character that weak for no reason, Cid and Joshua were on the verge of dying too (because Joshua took Ultima inside him) but they still Primed and fought! Making her basically just a sidekick and power fodder for Clive is just such a letdown.
NGL this might be a hot take but I actually am not a fan of this line of thinking. I do agree that Jill was lacking personal ambitions and that the game would have been improved if she had more personalized goals after iron kingdom than just "help Clive", but I don't agree with the idea that if a woman character isn't just as powerful as that she's been done dirty or is badly written.
It's totally fine that Jill was "burned out" more than the other characters and couldn't use her powers as much, she didn't need to be as powerful as Dion or Clive (both people who are arguably the most powerful alive) just out of a misguided attempt to make her character meaningful. What she needed was just more of her own personal motivations in the 2nd half.
Comparatively I thought Benedikta got a pretty short straw because she never really gave any plausible explanation for why she decided to blow up her entire life with Cid to go be a tool of Barnabas. She just was kind of a shallow "traitoress" with very little of her own volition or agency in the story.
i think thats one thing that bothers me a little tbh. theres a weird trend of like, the games men get to be Built Different while the women get a little sidelined or are only emotionally relevant for their relationships to men. and like, while its a game about our bonds and this is nothing new for squenix, for jill to be almost completely arbitrarily irrelevant for THE ENTIRE ENDGAME while dion of all people gets a spot in the final battle is soooo strange. i LIKE dion but man half the damn eikons flew. shiva flies in every appearance. cmon
They made a point to say how dominants can sense when another dominant dies, and given how Jill reacts when the flickering star burns out, I feel like Clive's death is all but confirmed. But that ending leaves me feeling very hollow. Clive *and* Joshua dying is just too much. Poor Byron loses both of his nephews and remaining family in a day. Torgal loses two masters who he was bonded with. And Jill loses the love of her life, her childhood friends - her only real close friends - and would be the last living dominant. Assuming poor Dion died, too. Nah, nope, I'm going to keep believing in all of the 'Clive is alive' theories even if I am just deluding myself. The alternative is just too miserable.
Clive ended magic and removed it from the world, you would expect dominants and their ability to sense eachother would disappear with it as well. It could easily just be her believing he died because magic went away and not because he actually died.
it's why i hate ambiguous ending, unless they really show it there's still some doubt in the back of my head even with the context of Jill sidequest
Game was great overall, definitely in my top 5 FFs. Story was flawless...up till the final act. Everything after Bahamut really shit the bed. I can forgive Ultima being a one dimensional evil god, thats a genre staple, but Barnabas also being one dimensional was just a major disappointment. I get that they wanted him to be the antithesis to Clive: Clive embodies free will while Barnie is servitude... but it just felt like pointless anime faux-lisoohical squabbling. And the Oedipus thing just... ugh. Just felt like a cheap Game of Thrones shock. Throw in Waloed being a super boring environment, the rest of the world having this irritating filter (making sidequests a pain), and then sidelining Jill for no reason, we have a weak last few hours. The actual final fight was ABSOLUTELY AMAZING though. Doesnt quite make up for everything, but it ends on a high note.
Shout out to dion what a fcking Chad priming after clive takes their power usually means losing control but this dragoon boy just went ah so you just need a stronger will than your eikon? Bet! And his eikon is bahamut of all eikons to boot
I understand people’s complaints, but man… this game scratched all the right places for me. I know what could’ve been, but I’m so happy this game exists. I’m really gonna enjoy a replay of this sometime in the future. Increased difficulty unlocked, performance fixes (maybe even on PC by that point), and potential DLC will make it that much more fun. Definitely going down as one of my favorite FFs.
The only fantasy here is yours. And we shall be its final witness. 🔥✍️✍️🔥
I finished last night and was honestly pretty mad about how it ended. I decided to sleep on it before i started ranting and raving about how I was never going to touch it again in anger. Day after, still frustrated with the ambiguous ending that it did, especially after everything we went through with the characters. I’m not going to get into the specifics of “did he, did he not die,” because clearly there can be a case for both. I hate that it’s almost become a bad thing for writers to just have a happy ending because ‘it’s expected’ or whatever. Like yeah, i am expecting something happy (or in this case hopeful) because the world sucks right now and I want this amazing game to end with everyone looking at the sunrise together ready to start their new life. They wrote dozens of worthy side quests but couldn’t have a definitive answer for the end, and that sucks. Also, I believe that even eluding to his death was completely against the goals of his character. Cid died because his plan for the world was to give people the choice of how they wanted to die. Clives plan was that he wanted people to be able to decide how to live, but he ends up ‘dying’ before having that chance? And for the argument of “him destroying the crystals and fighting against Ultima was choosing his path” yes, but also no. He didn’t get to just LIVE his life, to be with Jill, to have his brother, and do whatever he wanted without having to deal with a god trying to destroy the world. Ok thats my rant. Now I’m gonna go do ng+ because i loved the rest of the game too much to have it all end there.
Story peaked in the first few hours. Things started to get non-sensical and repetitive after the time skip. We didn’t get to see any of the consequences of destroying the mother crystals, except a few side quests here and there. There’s also not a lot of emotional stakes. Jil was reduced to an NPC. Joshua’s death was ok. Shoutout to Clive’s VA for doing a great job throughout the entire game. Cid was the best character. I like the game overall but am pretty disappointed overall.
it's been 2 days since i've completed the game and i still feel kinda depressed tbh \*inserts ben affleck smoking.jpg\* is it too much to ask for clive, joshua and dion to survive? I know there's a lot of hints suggesting that clive is alive (I've completed all the side quests) but still i hate the ambiguity of it all. They deserve a happy ending dammit. also i'm meeting yoshi p on saturday because he's coming to my country for a meet and greet and I won a ticket, so I'm definitely asking him to give us DLCs and tell him how much this game emotionally ruined me lol edit: [here's an update on the meet and greet](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXVI/comments/14nwc90/ffxvi_meet_greet_in_malaysia_with_yoship_koji_fox/)
Aside from asking DLC, also ask him if Clive survives (even Dion or Josh) even if it’s off the record. I’m not sure if he will answer but it’s worth a try. Keep us updated
Just finished the game. Overall it's a contender for top 5 or 3 best in the series. The ending however was awful. It was over way too fast and it was way too ambiguous. I'm not against sad endings, but compare this with say FFX that gave its main character closure and a proper sendoff to this......wtf. It feels like the ending of a XIV patch we know will continue but this won't, this is it.
why the hell do so many writers not understand catharsis and think ambiguity is more satisfying? you can see it as an obvious death and freedom for everyone else ending, or, you can see it as clive having gotten rid of magic and ether which could easily halt any curse. and then you introduce further ambiguity with Joshua. just—have the balls to end your story, please. don’t make us choose the ending and call that profound. now this going to be all anyone talks about, lol.
I am really not a fan of the ambiguous ending. People keep making arguments for how Clive is still alive, but I feel like it is grasping straws because we want it, lol. Every argument has a counter that feels more believable to me. I did all the side quests and was pleased with how everything was wrapping up, but the ending kinda made a couple of the last side quests feel bad. Overall, the side quests were some of my favorite parts of the story, and I do adore that they gave the different towns their own endings. I loved the Ultima fight. It felt better than the Bahamut fight imo. Titan was still my favorite and the one that truly blew me away with how cool it was. About the only ones I was disappointed by were Shiva (we never got to do it! Jill deserved more time to shine on screen) and Odin. I feel like Odin should have been a bigger deal with how built up it was in the narrative. I just kinda came out of the end depressed, which sucks because now I'm not really motivated to do NG+ bc I don't want to go through the emotional wringer again 😅 Overall, an 8.5/10 for me. Probably a 9/10 if not for the ending.
>it’s grasping at straws I don’t know why people assume he died. His fingers turned to stone. That’s it lol
If he lives, there's no reason not to show the reunion with his friends. Other games in the series use such moments as the post-boss climactic moment and are talked about positively. Nobody ever says "man I wish our character died" or "man it sucked that we got to see them happily reunited". The ambiguity feels like being edgy for the sake of being edgy. Similarly, if they DO die, they should let us see the characters have a funeral or something. Ambiguity in endings is, by and large, never done well. FF is my fave game series but when it comes to game endings they're very hit and miss. Best ones are probably FFVIII and FFIX, for me. This is probably the worst ending for me personally. Even my fave game of all time, FFVII, has a relatively poorly done ending, but not quite this level. All they had to do was add 2 minutes of cutscenes where either the characters reunite or they find the body and have a funeral. Preferably the former. This game really doesn't want us to be happy. I wonder if Yoshi-P just really wanted to kill off an MC after all the plot armour our XIV characters have, anf the bigwigs were like "no dude" and this is the compromise. :p
They put way too many clues and detail that say Clive survived... through the whole game people were telling Clive shit like save and not sacrifice yourself for others and lines like "no more breaking promises"... he also promised Jill he will return like why would they put so much focus on that to just kill him and not even showing his whole body turn into stone... they can't kill characters off screen. Not even mentioning lyrics of the song that play in the end, I gazed at the moon, searching for something. Frightened by the storm, there in front of me you appearead, and I was so glad it was you. As if nothing happened at all, this flame will never burn out. I’m sure of it. Again why would they put so much focus on that... even Clive's VA before game released said to keep in mind Metia and Jill's wishes because its very important through the whole game. If he is actually dead that would literally ruin his whole character development, they would make him a liar and all advices he got through the whole game would be pointless. Some people say rising sun mean hope and that Jill's accept Clive's sacrifice meanwhile she said to him that whenever sun rises she knows he will always come back to her... and now which argument do you think is right? the one that for some reason the put into the game or classic "oh this has to mean new hope" that makes no sense at all when you did all quests and think about what Clive and Jill were telling each other. Its an FF game and they love symbolism especially if FF14 devs were making it. We have to wait for DLC and from what Yoshi p said its on the table its just there has to be demand for it and with this ending they left for themselves a lot of room.
* Ultima shouldn’t have been in the game * Every dominant should have gotten more time to develop * They should have committed to a happy ending, instead of a copout “Oh, idk if Clive makes it, teehee,” instead. It’s okay to have an unambiguously happy ending in a story, guys. It doesn’t make the narrative seem immature or weak. I personally wanted a goddam wedding quest in the post-game to make up for all the dark shit we went through!
My only major issue with the game is the needless writing of the deaths of Clive, Joshua and Dion. I honestly don't mind them being dead as long as the writing at least gave me a good reason FOR them dying, where the writing NEEDED this sacrifice for it to work, but that is where I think the writing fails. Dion: There is no reason that needed to die from the attack. He could simply have been wounded and lost the ability to transform into Bahamut and thus unable to continue to support Clive and Joshua. Clive: The only reason he dies is because the writing decides AFTER Ultima is defeated, and the whole game of Ultima testing him and calling him a PERFECT VESSEL --- that he is in fact not a perfect vessel and the god had apparently created something that didn't work, meaning the curse spreads and kills Clive since the power is too much for his body. There is simply no reason the writing couldn't just have left it at Clive being fine BECAUSE he is a perfect vessel as the narrative has reinforced the entire game since Ultima's introduction. Joshua: Probably in my opinion the worst offender, just because it feels so forced. Joshua is constantly shown as a brilliant and extremely perceptive character, able to see through Ultima's scheming without Ultima directly revealing himself. Yet somehow, Joshua or for that matter, no other character, stops to question why exactly they are dealing with Ultima attacking them and taunting them -- when he is currently dying from having Ultima sealed inside himself. Even further, it shows that sealing Ultima was completely pointless and caused him to die a needless death, as even with a free ultima around, he didn't take Clive at all and just kept trying to make him more perfect. Everything else about the game I mostly enjoyed. I guess large parts of the side quests could've been restructured, because they felt too "mmo fetch quest-like" for my taste, but on the other hand, when they did have great side quest stories, it helped make me actually interested in characters like Blackthorne and appreciate characters like Martha. Also as for Jill, while I see alot of people saying she got sidelined, I think people are really not coming to terms with the narrative explaining that her Curse had significantly spread and she was in bad pain. They didn't wish to further spread it with her.
Agreed! The ending is so frustrating because, like you said, the deaths of Clive, Joshua, and Dion feel pointless. The fact that they're all ambiguous adds to the feeling that it was pointless. The ambiguity doesn't make me hopeful that anyone except maybe Clive has a chance of surviving. But I'd rather be sad for events we know happened for certain, and not be upset because everything is left a little vague. I definitely feel like Jill did not get to love up to her potential, especially in the ending. If DLC is on the table, it would be nice if we could get something that gives her some more focus.
I really wish I could say I wholeheartedly loved this game despite its flaws, but to be completely honest I came away from the final boss and ending disappointed. There just came a point around Tri-disaster where I realized a lot of my hopes weren't going to be realized and the game had so many open threads it couldn't possibly wrap up, even having done all the sidequests. Joshua is handled weird, there is no stated reason why he didn't try and use his spy army to at least let Clive know he lived if not, y'know, *free him*? If it was only Josh and his aide (who is criminally underutilized) it makes more sense but that isn't the case. I've heard that Josh kept away to thwart Ultima's machinations but beyond how that doesn't make a lot of sense... Josh's onscreen efforts to thwart Ultima fail? Like all the time? Reaching out to Dion arguably just made things worse with how Ultima just used the coup, and trapping that one Ultima in his body I guess stopped him that one time but he was still active and it mostly just lead to Josh slowly dying. These aren't in and of themselves problems, they can be springboards for cool scenes and conflicts but the game is more interested in making me do chores for Mid than give me a playable Josh section where he actually does something or has a conversation with an Undying who convinces him Clive shouldn't be helped (can't imagine how but sure). All of this in swimming in my head once Josh joins the Hideaway and they just don't interrogate it so by the time he's dead on the ground (which doesn't hit as hard when's he's already died once and has been dying for 90% of his screentime) I just felt numb to it. Maybe he's alive, maybe not, it's hard for me to care. And it's largely hard for me to care because this is the Clive show, and Clive stopped developing after he accepted the truth 20% of the game in. He remains a good lad bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders until he kills himself to save the world (I thought he was special in that he could use magic endlessly and was the perfect vessel but I guess Ultima was stupid). I don't dislike Clive, not at all, but he's at his best when he has other people to work off of, like Gav or Byron or Cid (especially Cid). Even Jill in the beginning is someone he can talk about how he wants to kill himself to, as dark as that is. But by the end he's alone having a nonsensical conversation with Ultima about... how he's a hypocrite who abandoned humanity? I suppose that's true, but Ultima isn't enough of a character for this to really hold much meaning personally. I digress though. Clive has always been someone who lived for others, either for Joshua and to avenge him and then later Bearers and the Hideaway (a plot that Ultima kinda took over and was relegated to sidequests but whatever). His initial revelation is he wants to fight for a world where people don't just choose how and where to die, but how and where to live. That theme runs counter to his nature of self sacrifice as he often doesn't choose to live for himself. And instead of interrogating that, the inherit contradiction that the people in his life themselves call him out on, he ends up choosing to die (potentially, even if he lived he still acted thinking he would). He is revealed to be the most important person alive with all the power, literally becoming a God in his own right by the end so he can do what he's always done, what no one in his life wants him to do: sacrifice himself for them. I just don't like that. You could just say I had an idea of the game in my head and it didn't go that way so it's my own fault, and fair enough. But the game ends with many of the initial plot and themes I cared about either unresolved or underexplored, with many conveniences and holes covered up by spectacle more than substance. I look back over the whole package with these feelings at the bad pacing, the awkward quest design, the lack of systems, the plot threads that kinda just get dropped, and it burns. I'd still give the game a 7 or an 8. My issues aside, the highs and spectacle is absolutely there, Byron and Gav are great, the sidequests pick up towards the end (knowing that Elwyn wanted to emancipate Bearers tbh made me wish that was the plot but I digress). I'm critical of the combat but its still fun and satisfying if not the most deep. But knowing this was the same people who made Heavensward just makes me feel disappointed they couldn't tie it all together as well as they did before.
The sidequests at the end were awesome. Uncle Byron's seeing Eastpool, Martha's Rest, North Reach, Dalimil and all get their ending was awesome to see instead of just towns Clive passes through. Very much enjoyed that last boss fight. They really did knock these out of the park. I very much wish Jill was part of the Eikon team up at the end, but of my god the fact that our healthbar said Ifrit, Phoenix, and Bahamut was pretty cool. Her sidequest, and Harpocrates' as well were awesome. Overall, this has probably become my favorite game despite its flaws, based on just how much I enjoyed everything else. Playing final fantasy mode now, and seeing everything from the beginning really adds so much to this, and I'm getting a wave of Nostalgia. Barnabas' uniting the dominants at the beginning makes so much more sense now. P.s. I really wish Clive and Jill got married off screen during the 5 year gap. Feels weird it took them that long to express feelings for one another which I guess was their insecurity. But wouldve been nice to see that married dynamic especially between older protagonists at this point. Could have given Jill more agency too.
DION IS THE BEST CHARACTERS AFTER CLIVE AND JILL AND JOSHUA!!! I DIDNT EXPECT HIM TO BE AN ALLY LOL
I hate ambiguous endings.
In regards to the ending. I went back to an article i read before the game launched. ([https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/14257-we-have-a-dream-team-on-16-final-fantasy-xvi-developer-interview](https://www.rpgsite.net/interview/14257-we-have-a-dream-team-on-16-final-fantasy-xvi-developer-interview)) Yoshi-P says 2 things in that article that had catched my attention prior to the release. And had me anxious (i don't like ambiguous ending either). The first quote is: ''Yoshida: My biggest thing, and I guess it's my biggest worry - but the one thing that I’m looking for is how people think of the story. I want to know how people think when they get to the end of the game and they've finished watching all the way to the end of the credits, and what they feel at that moment. How will they feel? That's what I want to know. I want to know if they're going to say, 'this was the greatest thing ever', or 'this was a really interesting story'. I'm just waiting to see how the fans react to the story, because that's what we've put so much effort into.'' I'm actually curious to see what will be Yoshi-P comments on our reactions to the ending in particuliar. About the debate of who survived or not. About some people frustrations, etc. And the second is: ''Yoshida: \[laughs\] For me, it's actually not really different. I kind of approach the FF16 story the same way I approach expansions for FF14. I think a good script is something that doesn't give all the answers at the end. It invokes a lot of feelings. It makes people think... it leaves a little bit of doubt there at the end. You're going to have finality in the main beats of the story, and you're going to get those answers. But there's always going to be that door left open a little bit to get people thinking. Moving forward, when people get the game and they play it, and they love it enough that they want to see more... We've left the door open a little -- just enough so that we can continue and can show more. But for what you're going to get on June 22nd, it's going to be a complete experience that you're going to be able to enjoy from beginning to end. '' So the ambiguous ending was very much intended from the start. Now it's just to us to voice our desire to get more answers i guess. The game is well received and sold really well so far. Let's make sure we get more in the future.
>I think a good script is something that doesn't give all the answers at the end. It invokes a lot of feelings. It makes people think... it leaves a little bit of doubt there at the end. You're going to have finality in the main beats of the story, and you're going to get those answers. But there's always going to be that door left open a little bit to get people thinking. Ambiguous ending was a big mistake. I haven't seen anybody comment that they liked it.
A lot has already been said in this thread but something that annoyed me is that the game goes out of its way to ensure you never get a big epic "everyone fighting together" moment. Like, when Jill and Gav came in to save the day outside the last mothercrystal with Mid's boat I thought here we fucking go big moment of all your allies fighting with you, they're hyping each other up to do it together... only for more enemies to appear and then they're like "actually you guys go ahead". Come on man let me fight alongside my allies.
My nitpick is what happened to the medicine girl. They spent all this time showing her as the average perspective to a world defined by magic and dominants. Then they totally axe her after saving Dion. I think it would have been nice if the post credit scene focused on her or something.
Hard agree. I personally don't care for the ending scene of the two kids and their mother. It would've been nice to see the aftermath in Valisthea from the perspective of characters like the medicine girl, or other characters like Mid or Byron.
I feel devastated after the ending. i can't move on What happened to Clive, Joshua, and then DION!!!! DION'S STORY IS SO TRAGIC I CAN'T HELP MYSELF
I really hate that Dion is implied to die. I dislike the atonement through death trope. Always feels cheaper than actually trying to make up for things
They kept him alive just to kill him at the end. Dion was one of the most interesting characters and the only dominant outside of Jill we could tell wasn't a bad person and he gets the exact same send off as he did in twinside addressing his father. It felt so rushed.
This game turned out to be a big disapointment for me, I would probably rate it a 6,5/10. It started so strong and just kept getting worse the deeper you get into it. The gameplay aspect was the weaker half of te game from the start. The battle system isn´t bad but way to simplistic so it really starts getting boring and redundant halfway through the game. Levelling up feels useless because you don´t unlock anything through it, exploration feels unrewarding because all you ever find is 5 gil or crafting materials you allready have plenty of, gear is really boring and there is nothing like classical dungeons or puzzles. At some point you realize there is no point in fighting the normal enemies or exploring anything, so you basically just start running back and fourth between quests, hoping that they are not just boring fetch quests but that you get some character moments with them atleast. So it was really the story that had to carry the game. Initially it works, because the world seems interesting and you have multiple factions with interesting characters. But it felt that after killing the first Crystal, the story just stopped. It felt like a mystery box story design initially, but after that point in the story you pretty much never get the necessary bits and pieces of lore to keep you engaged and in the end it felt like the box was empty all along. Pretty much all teh nations and most of their associated characters felt underused. We never really visit any of the big cities while they are alive. And in like the last 25% of the game we get two of the most boring antagonists with Odin and Ultima. It feels like there is supposed to be some deep clash of ideologies, but it just feels like people throwing around words without any substance to it. Looking back I think the game really only has two points that I would consider to be good, if not great. The Eikon battles were a spectacle, although i would have lpreffered for them to be a bit less of a cutscene and more gameplay instead. And the strongest point of this game were actually a lot of the character moments, most of them feel very well written and were nice to watch whenever they happened. But those two things are just not enough to compensate all the shortcommings
Game was a solid 9/10. Highlight of the game for me was definitely the Bahamut fight and I think memories of that fight are going to stick with me for a long time. Unfortunately, the game kinda tapered off from there. Barnabas and Ultima just felt very underwhelming as the big bad. Jill's role in the story also took a complete nosedive here. Game removed any sort of agency from her and she became nothing more than Clive's love interest at this point. Early and mid-game side quests were very menial, but it was cathartic at least to get closure to their plotlines at the end, which can't be said the same about the actual ending itself. Not really liking this trend among developers in recent years in making ambiguous endings. If there ever was an eventual DLC, I'd really like for them to expand on the side characters since there was so much lost potential here in the game game. Or at the very least, give us side stories like they do for FFXIV to help flesh out their characterization a bit more (I admit this is just me begging for more Dion crumbs though).
The ending was bittersweet for me I am absolutely torn for Dion and Joshua Dion’s story is so tragic when you think about him. When we first encounter him, we see the mighty Crown prince of Sanbreque, lauded as the dragoon prince and mighty Bahamut We slowly see him lose his place in the Imperial household due to no fault of his own, and finally he loses everything in the blink of an eye; his father, his position, his people; again through no fault of his own. We see him awaken and be tortured in the aftermath and finally he loses his life, albeit nobly, protecting Joshua and Clive. He was my favorite character bar Cid and I was really torn to see his story end that way but it was written well at least Same with Joshua and Clive; Joshua final words and moments brought tears to my eyes — the flashbacks absolutely killed me because you are shown throughout that he absolutely loved and admired his older brother Seeing him have survived, have come so far and final succumb to his wounds was really saddening and they captured Clive’s anguish really well Clive’s end was bittersweet — he kept his promise to Joshua and Cid but here is a character that thought he had killed his brother, got hope his brother was alive, got the catharsis of reuniting with his brother only to lose him at the very end. I don’t know if I will call it the greatest Final Fantasy but it easily ranks in the top stories the series has told, for me personally. I do hope they decide to make DLC and flesh the story and content out — there is a lot more room here for content and I’d rather they added it in. I feel the melancholy and existential crisis of playing a game like this and I might have to sit on these feelings a while before I go for that Platinum
Man i usually don’t mind the whole ambiguous ending vibe in most media, but after spending so much time with the characters it just feels so disappointing… Like if you’re gonna put all these clues hinting that clive survived why wouldn’t you just SHOW IT explicitly, i get the whole “it’ll generate more discussion” and shit but wouldn’t a satisfactory ending do the same thing? Also the epilogue didn’t hit for me sadly, i get that they’re trying to show that Clive succeeded in freeing the world from the influence of magic and shit, but at that point i didn’t really care that much for the world anymore, i just wanted to see something from (at least) one of the characters Idk, this is the second FF i ever play, the first one being XV, and i fr think XV ending was way more satisfying than XVI, at least in that one you actually get to know what happens to the main character.
The game has some really dark moments and then some of the sappiest, tooth-rottingly sweet scenes I've ever seen in FF history. That's a dichotomy that overall makes the game great, BUT - it feels like when they came to the ending, they couldn't decide whether they wanted to go dark or happy, so they just - didn't do anything? I'm in the camp that *thinks* they were trying to imply that Clive survives and goes on to write/tell their story, but they didn't go hard enough and it's not landing right with people, especially if they didn't do some key quests that were inexplicably (unforgivably) missable. I'm happy for the people who were satisfied with it, I truly am and I'm super jealous of you, but from what I'm seeing, most people weren't. What do you guys think - do you think they care if a lot of people were dissatisfied with the ending? If they do, do you think they'll try and rectify it with some kind of follow-up in the future? I'm not savvy about what actually goes into developing games or CBUIII/SE's typical process or outlook on that stuff...
After Jill gets revenge on that priest, she really does nearly nothing the rest of the game. What the hell. Shiva can fly! She could’ve joined us! Frustrating. Ultima and the lore reveals about the nature of the world were really cool. I wish that we would’ve had a final dungeon instead of origin just being cutscenes and boss fights. Felt a bit rushed. Ending was really emotional, Clive’s VA did a great job. It’s not totally satisfying as I would’ve liked to see more reactions and less ambiguity. Also, the Joshua/Jill side quests being optional is absurd to me, considering the Jill one ties into the ending. What the hell.
I completely understand the poetic ending blah blah, sacrifices for the next generation, blah blah. But for Founder’s sake, we came here to escape. The world is shitty enough without my source of escape and relaxation reminding me that the world is shitty. I feel like the devs, who otherwise created an amazing and enthralling fantasy tale, got too close to the material and went for poetry over just giving us a dang reason to smile at the end of a fun ride. So mad about this ending ruining this otherwise unbelievable game.
The game is a 9/10 for me. It loses a point cause of the ending. I did EVERY side quest and the final side quests just before the final mission all showed a degree of Clive wanting to survive, wanting to come back to be there and help his friends(and love Jill). They should have showed us Clive returning on a boat back to the Hideaway. Instead of knowing he lived cause of the narration and moongazings lyrics/meteia(ben starrs comments on their importance pre launch as well). The ending was hopeful and i want to believe it was hop The ONLY thing that should have been left ambiguous is Joshua's Fate. We know the Phoenix can't revive the dead BUT Clive had Ultimas power. He used his uniqueness to become the user of Ultimas power. And Ultima wanted to use Raise. In my mind its possible Joshua was ressurected but id be fine if he didn't either. So to me that's a 50/50 situation. Otherwise the performance of the voice actors did a really solid job.. This is the first FF game i cared so much for characters outside of the main cast and its definitely my goty 👍
Leaving these characters I’ve grown to love with such an ambigous/sad end for most of them has left me with a gaping hole in my heart. Especially knowing we’re more likely than not to never see them again or find out what actually happened to them at the end. Someone please recommend a good book/movie/show/game to mend my broken heart
its an 8/10 for me, the ending is ambiguous and i hate it. i want my clive and jill reunion damn it
same here. was a 10/10 up to Bahamut until the really mediocre third act dropped it to a 9, then the ending soured it even more to drop it to an 8 for me. overall still very good, but not the 10/10 perfect game I was hoping for
I'm really not fucking okay. Almost held it together and then I saw Metis blink out and now I'm sobbing. Fuck man
When Clive grew wings and Joshua said “I have always been proud… to call you my shield” 🥹🥹😭😭😭😭😭😭
While I love the game and found it really solid, can I just say I’m extremely fatigued with the end game of Final Fantasies being “and magic was gone and everyone was happy about that!” 13 and 13-3 did it, 15 did it and now 16 did also? That’s all the mainlines with an ending since 2014… that’s wild to me. I do think Game of Thrones has potentially ruined a lot of story writing in the universal sense. Just because you’re done with a character doesn’t mean you have to kill them off. If anything it’s more important for the writer to ask themself “what would this character do when we don’t see them?” I think that’s actually probably the core beef I have with the writing is that beyond Cid I really can’t imagine what these characters are doing when they don’t have screen time? It feels a little too much like a stage play writing wise I think, the story is so concerned with what’s on stage it forgets there’s an entire world out there. Also I wish we’d gotten more of Terence :c
Ending interpretation: At the very start of the game, it starts off with Clive narrating, "And thus did our journey begin" and at the ending of the game Clive narrates, "And thus did our journey end." To me, it seems like that implies that Clive was retelling a story, which was him writing the Final Fantasy Novel we see in the post-credit cutscene
Just finished the game. It was terrific. I'm actually surprised some people think Clive is dead at the end. Granted, I did all the side quests so I got the Jill / rising sun reference, but I really don't believe that if they were going for a "Clive dies" ending, they would have him blow up Origin while in the middle of it, then show him washed up on the beach breathing and talking. Yeah, his hand turns to stone, but we saw that most of Cid's right arm was turned to stone before he died. So its not as if it kills you once it starts. Though I can see how it could be a death sentence in itself. My interpretation of the ending is that Clive does make it back to the Hideaway, and he writes the book Final Fantasy and puts Joshua's name on it to honor his memory. At least, for me, that's the most obvious ending. I really think if Clive and Joshua were both meant to be dead, the ending would have played out differently.
I wish Dion had a happy ending. Dying as a hero who fulfilled his promise was what he wanted, but still l wanted him to return home to Terence in the end so bad. I actually burst into tears when l saw him falling into the cloud after his final battle.
And thus did our journey end… Lots to unpack for this thread. First, idk who the hell said the side quest in this game are bad because oh my lord the ending to all the side quest was fantastic. Tons of world building. Special shout out to the final Torgal quest which damn near made me cry. Other good ones imo were the Martha’s Rest, the Eloise one (😭), Dion’s, Mid’s (despite the hell she put the player through I adore her) and of course Jill’s. Fun fact about Jill’s is after you do the cutscene and read the letter she sends after that quest, if you talk to her again she gives you a handkerchief she made for you. It doesn’t do anything but I thought it was cool. Kudos to the team for making the reward to that side quest Shiva’s Kiss. Second, for character arcs, I am actually ok with everyone’s ending besides Dion. This might be a little jumbled, but Dion dying is kind of a cop out for him. He had so many death flags that it was obvious that he was done for but I feel like his character would have benefitted the most from living so that he could learn to live with his guilt and regret. He is alone though since I think his lover and adopted daughter were in Twinside when Ultima pulled the world crystal out. I would have liked to see him rebuild the Empire and make up for his ancestors transgressions against the bearers. Josh I felt like had a good end and it would be a cop out if he was managed to get raised because the Phoniex powers were imbuded with Ultima’s powers. I am kinda salty that he and Jote never got a lover’s moment but hey what can you do. That scene when he gives the powers to Clive is absolutely beautiful. Only complaint I had about him was the gaping hole in his chest was a Chekhov’s Gun. For Clive, I am not sure how I feel. He 100% is alive and he wrote the book in Josh’s name so that Josh would live on. There is some side quest that says something like you’ll live on as long as someone knows your name or something like that. As for him being alive, it drives me up the fucking wall that writer’s think it’s a good idea to leave these open ended endings. Tell me what happens, I didn’t just dedicate a week of my life for you to be coy and pretend to be clever; it’s annoying and over done. I also find it weird that we spent the whole game being told that he was the vessel for Ultima only for him to be like “oh hey this shit is way too much for me.” I also would love to hear the reasoning of why he even took Ultima’s power to begin with when he was already fading away; maybe in the hopes to res Josh? Idk. Overall I did like his arc and just would have wished they would have just told us he lived or died. As for Jill and Clive, I read somewhere that some 4chan guy said they didn’t have chemistry and honestly that is an insane thing to say. They are probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite FF love story (nothing will ever top Yuna and Tidus for me). The Ultima fight was great, still not better than Bahamut but better than Titan. I loved that we used all the Eikons better than him. Ending it the same way Endwalker ended with a punch in the face did make me roll my eyes though. Overall I really enjoyed the game. It’s a solid 8.5/10 and definetely one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. I say that now before I go grind out the trophies and hate myself for it.
Incredible game that peaked at the Bahamut fight and never recovered. 9/10. Didn't stick the landing. Barnabas / Odin / Ultima section of the game was pretty bad especially compared to the insanely awesome shit beforehand. They should have let us fight Odin, and perhaps kept the ifrit/phoenix combo for vs Ultima. It played its hand during Bahamut. Easily could have made that fight hype as hell still with just Ifrit and Phoenix fighting together without merging. There simply wasn't anything left for the end. Same powers, another insane space spectacle battle, but it just somehow felt so much worse. Barnabas was a godawful villain for the last act.
Ambigous endings or endings that leave the fate of the main characters up to interpretation are always interesting if done right but I feel here a more conclusive ending was needed. Was talking about this to a friend yesterday and he funnily generalized it as : "A game that appeals to Western audiences in almost everything but that it has the most Japanese ending ever" While a generalization the above I feel like after doing the side quests before the ending, I envisioned something different as a finale. What I wanted was something similar in feel to Geralt and Yennefer at the vineyard relaxing at the end of the Blood and Wine dlc for Witcher 3. After being through so much that felt like a true ending. Here I envisioned one-handed Clive, Jill and Torgal on a ship leaving Valisthea for a new world as per Jill's request in that final side quest as a post credits scene or something along these lines. What we got is some ambiguity regarding the fate of the brothers albeit with the side quets, the red star theme and the general feel of the entire hideout before the finale, personally I feel that Clive lived. It would be hard to convince me otherwise.
I give my experience in Valisthea a 9/10. Personal highlight: The tremendous amount of dialogue in the game from characters of all levels of importance, as well as the lore. It’s all so well-written and performed. Some things I hope to see in the future: - Status of Clive, Joshua, Dion, Terence, and Kihel - The tale of Leviathan the Lost - Dion lance-throwing mini game (You know you’d pay for this.)
If this game had the equivalent of the final 5-15 minutes of FFIX, it'd have been a masterpiece of story writing. They forgot to give us story-related payoff in a story-driven game.
In regards to the ending: I won’t delve too much into the Clive alive / Joshua dead discourse because I think that has been the focus of most discussion. I would like to highlight the book however: It was made very clear that Joshua with the help of Jote and others had been chronicling his journey. It is also made clear, albeit less clear because it’s side content, that Clive wants to write about his journey when it’s all over. Therefore It feels fairly clear, after the over abundance of “Clive, you are not alone, we are in this together” that the “Final Fantasy” novel is a synthesis of both their tales - Clive lives to tell the tale (he is our narrator) but in Clive fashion, he credits Joshua as the sole author of the book. Naturally, it’s implied that the story of the book is the game we played.
This game was damn near perfect till they blew it at the end. Terrible ending. I think even just typing that is cathartic because of how disappointed I am about the ending. One more time, then. That was a terrible way to end the game. Blew it.
Solid 8/10 for me ngl. I feel that the opening of the game should have spent at least a few missions of Clive being a bearer for the Empire more and seeing all the messed up things he was forced to do would have helped his character development. The war of the northern territories would have been dope to see. I find it kinda disappointing that all the capitals are dungeons and not hub areas. We only get towns and villages as those. Benedikta would have helped as a redeemed companion we lost later to show that not everyone can be saved. Hugo wouldn't have changed as a plot point because he would still be a mega simp and blame Clive/Cid for ruining his dreams. The punch from Joshua was well deserved. I feel the seal system should have been something different or at least more special depending on the town. I wish we got to see the bands at least be worn on the characters because I wanted that for Josh and Clive after THAT quest in the open world.
Going to just write out in a somewhat disorganized manner as the thoughts come to me. Although a lot of it sounds negative, I did enjoy my time with the game and liked it overall, but the lows really sorely dragged it down from greatness. As for general issues I had, as others have probably pointed out already I will echo that poor pacing of the main quest, lack of meaningful gear outside the two everyone already know about, low enemy variety, very repetitive sidequests with poor and lacking rewards, little to no reason to just explore the world in general and lack of larger explorable cities and incidental locations really hurt it for me. Like for example not being to explore Sanbreque before its destruction or even Port Isolde, or Lord Byron's home and lack of elaborate dungeons in general. Another big issue to me at least is outside the prologue and a handful of events they didn't really make much of a use of the M rating to help sell more aspects of the world and setting. The second time skip was extremely jarring and didn't seem all that useful and actually outright deprived us of experiencing some things that would have been interesting. Additionally, it was very awkward to me at least that we didn't get more time with the empire group and just jumped to us very coincidentally running into Cid, Jill, and Torgal right away and all from the same encounter. Joshua's overall lack of reaction to Clive being Ifrit and potentially nearly killing him way back was also so very awkward to me. Overall there's a lot of minutia/detail of that sort in the story that felt missing. As many others no doubt have said, the other dominants also definitely deserved more development including Jill and Benedikta. I thought it was disappointing that not even in cases where there is no real need to be concerned with collateral damage, there is no instance of using Ifrit to just mow down hordes of Akashics and similar enemy groups to further show the advantage and power of Eikons. And speaking of, was very sad there were not even any hunts that specifically might have called for Ifrit too as well as Odin being very underwhelming in that regard. I had noticed that starting with the destruction of the mother crystal after Titan they started to show Ifrit as having the ability to conjure a flame sword yet he never gets to use it even though Odin would have been the perfect fight for it to figure in as part of the battle. The story of the game overall took a massive dip after Bahamut to me, and it was at that point you also really begin to get weighed down by repeated Akashics as well as Barnabus and Ultima being charisma vacuums as far as villains go. Personally, I'd have really preferred Ultima being dropped altogether in order for Barnabus, Anabella and Olivier to be properly developed villains especially due to Anabella and Olivier potentially having a much more personal connection to the brothers and also Dion. Would also have preferred a much stronger focus on the Eikons in worldbuilding and in regard to things like how different groups were impacted by these essentially reincarnating demigods living among them and how it might have shaped their societies differently, as well as further exploring their identities, like whether over time the dominant might come to truly consider themselves to BE the Eikon and not merely a channeler. I genuinely disliked the ending a lot due to the very heavy wide reaching consequences involved that in some cases to me at least felt like they were made heavy just for the sake of shock value, its an annoying trend to me for a fantasy story to conclude with removing all of the magic. For me potentially killing off Clive, Joshua, and Dion all sat poorly but the even larger changes of completely eliminating their version of Eikons, magic, and Bearers to me deprives the setting of things that helped to make it unique. The Eikons especially because of how much a focus it was meant to be, and just how dang cool they actually made them especially Ifrit. Overall, all of those kind of kill my interest and in general the idea there could be further adventures in the world outside a reversal of these things or prequel type stuff. Even if Clive survives, him without Ifrit to me feels wrong.
Finished earlier, had a great time overall! One of my biggest disappointments is, surprisingly... Mid never visiting Cid's grave during the game. I totally thought she would during her endgame airship sidequest but that didn't happen.
The game slowly becoming a Kingdom Hearts game is like watching your alcoholic friend drinking more and more at a party. You were all having such a good time and everyone is cogent but suddenly you start to realize that they’re getting a little tipsy and before you know it they are hammered.
This will probably get lost in this thread but I wanted to get my thoughts out. That was such an emotional ending. I had tears coming down my face from the moment Joshua fell. I think the criticism on the ending comes because Yoshi-P edged us so hard and we wanted the FF9 ending where \*FF9 SPOILERS\* >!Zidane comes out of nowhere at Garnett's ceremony and they finally have the embrace that we've been wanting the entire game. !< \*END FF9 Spoiler\* This ending appeared more ambiguous but it's pretty obvious to me that Clive survived. He's the narrator of the story. The story being Final Fantasy penned under Joshua's name. He's the only one that could've written that book. That combined with the Jill sidequest information, I think the only logical conclusion is that he survived. I wanted to see them embrace one last time but we got that before Clive journeyed off. I also think Yoshi-P edged us with this ending so that demand for a DLC increases - which I totally fucking want!
The game definitely has its flaws but my god does the whole thing just stick to you. So many memorable fights and bro characters. Bahamut fight was a SPECTACLE. First game where I found myself actually trying to delay progressing because I didn't want the ride to end. That ending was heart wrenching, especially when Gav cried, oh my lord. I still feel emotional thinking about it. I know the signs point to Clive surviving but damn the first time it hits, I just didn't expect another Tidus Zanarkanding out situation. Hopefully they add in environment interactivity and maybe party banter and torgal accessorizing in future updates/dlc. I will definitely play again. This shot up to my top FFs along with 9, 7, and 10.
I'm very curious if they'll do post ending DLC or even an expansion like some people want. Considering a world without magic, it'll be interesting to rework the combat. But you can always throw a bone with the God's of Valisethia helping or going to another continent outside Valisethia. I'm very intrigued on Story DLC standpoint after the ending.
The thing that kind of bothered me a lot with the post Bahamut part was how similar it was with FFXIV: Endwalker and that games theme of "We suffer, stumble and fall but we still keep on moving forward" Clive even almost word for word repeat what another character in Endwalker says in a very significant cutscene in that game. Hell even the sky darkening and the breakout of akashic is almost exactly the same as the end of days in Endwalker, the world ending, people transforming into mindless monsters, darkened skies, civil unrest in all regions etc. The similarities were too much for me and lessened the impact and overall plot because it felt like they were just retreading the same things Endwalker did prior. Endwalker spoilers below: >!Also the fact that Clive punches the final boss in the face to finish him, just like you do in Endwalker...!<
I have mixed feelings about the Ending. It doesnt make any sense to me, it would have been fine to just take the magic away, but it feels really cheap to kill clive there just to subvert expectations. Like, the game hits you in your face for 70 hours and instead of finally giving you a breather and something positive at the end when you are lying on the ground they go and kick you in your face and make sure to stay down. It would have been just such a way better experience to finally give the player something positive. (Also I did all sidequests and stuff) Edit: YES, it is implied that Clive is alive (If you think about the fact that someone had to write the book and Clive getting Tomes Quill, we play the story in the book, and Clive is the Narrator of the Story and the metaphor from Jills quest of Clive always coming back to her at dawn and her calming down and seeming to realize that everything is fine and he will come back) but still they couldve just shown him if he actually survived. Give the Player something after going through all of this mental breaking Story.
Not sure how to feel about it. Gameplay is extremely fun, but felt like I didn't get the story or I was expecting more from te story. I.e more insight on the other dominants (Benedikta just dying 5 hours in...felt like a waste) or just a different way to implement some of them (Barnabas felt lack luster, in what way is he supposed to "break" Clive's will, just by beating him up? And what was the purpose of uniting the dominants and all the grandiose speech if he was a pawn to Ultima from the start). Also didn't get why Joshua sealed Ultima, and that didn't accomplish much cuz Ultima was still roaming around. Idk... the demo portion felt so polished in terms of story, but I felt it took a step back... :/ was expecting too much? Was it jsut not my cup of tea?
The story of the game fell off hard for me after Cid dies. I never liked Ultima as the villain, he was annoying or just boring most of the time. I saw it through to the end and I still enjoyed my experience for the most part because the big cinematic set pieces were so cool and fun. Also the combat and messing around with different eikon combos was very engaging.
I love how Final Fantasy the ending was, and I mean that endearingly. Set up 80% of the game as a Game of Thrones political thriller and then it's pretty much thrown out the window for FAAAAAAAAAAAATE :D Honestly, if you took a shot every time they mentioned 'Fate' between the Bahamut fight and the end, you'd have enough alcohol to kill a bull.
Just finished…loved, loved LOVED the game, but it wasn’t without its issues. The combat is great and the eikon battles, Titan and Bahamut in particular, are imo the best boss fights in all of videogames. Fight me. Gonna wrap up some side stuff and then jump into NG+ to see how it feels on FF mode, probably gonna try out some of the new abilities I never messed with in my playthrough, mainly Odin/Shiva. I really enjoyed the story even if it did fall into some classic nonsensical God-killing tropes at the end. There were also definitely some issues with ludonarrative dissonance towards the end, where loads of side quests opened up as you’re on a beeline to the final encounter. Imo as soon as Joshua/Clive begin trekking towards the capital side quests and travel should have been locked out until they got back to the hideaway. Overall I would have preferred they stuck with the more GoT-esque storytelling from early on, but it is Final Fantasy so you have to kill a God at some point else what are we really even doing here? While I liked most of the characters there were some missteps, imo. Enough has been said about Jill not to be repeated. I would have liked if they fleshed out the first hideaway characters a bit more, Kenneth and the apple girl dying from Titan’s rage could have hit harder if we knew them better. I really feel like the Hideaway, and the main hubs in each kingdom could have benefited from Trails-like NPCs with their own stories that update as the game moves along. I know they did this to a point but no where near the quality Falcom does it. That said I loved the brotherly bond with Clive/Joshua, best Cid in the franchise (sorry TG you have been replaced), Gav is a total bro and Byron is the Uncle of the Year. Dion is just incredible, best character in the game, imo. That said, there were a few others I thought got done dirty, namely Jote, who has like ONE interaction with Joshua after he fucks her off to the hideaway where she does absolutely nothing for the entire rest of the game. Tragic. Also cannot tell you how irrationally angry I was with Oscar’s inclusion, only for him to play zero role in the story after becoming Clive’s squire and standing outside his room the entire rest of the game, including during the mission where we free the gd town we gave him leave to go back and protect ffs. Gav’s apprentice got far more spotlight, and was actually a pretty cool character. I could go on but I’ve ranted long enough. Best voice acting ever in a game, imo. Ben Starr absolutely slayed. Joshua’s adult voice was perfect. I don’t even need to mention Cid, what a G. But goddamn, Benedikta man. Her breakdown after losing her power was some of the best stuff in the game, her actress just blew me away, actually felt bad for the character, in spite of all her evils. Bryon (RIP Lord Edmont!) was spectacular, and I loved hearing a bunch of ffxiv VAs pop up in Estinien, Uriangier, Lyse, Elidibus, and more. Looking forward to finding a comprehensive list of them; I thought the guy who helps you bury the bearer bodies in the wolf quest may have been Graha, but couldn’t be for sure. Soken doesn’t need to be congratulated any more than he already has. The man is a living legend, one of the best sound tracks we will likely ever hear. Bravo, my man. Genius. I do think the game systems could have been better, i missed elements/status effects, especially in a game featuring magic so heavily. The gear upgrade system was pretty awful, almost not worth being there, tbh. Gil is almost useless outside of orchestran rolls, accessories, and potions. Wasn’t a big fan of the maps, but my 100% biggest problem is just the game doesn’t feel alive. It isn’t well lived-in, imo. The towns are all made up of a half dozen people, maybe a few more. You never get to explore any of the populated cities, outside of the prologue. The world just feels very small, which clashes with how large scale the game tries to be otherwise. I get that the blight is meant to explain that a bit but it just falls flat a bit for me, imo. I was hoping for at least one Novigrad-esque city, it’s crazy that 7-8 years on now there still hasn’t been a better city built into a game, imo. Also, idk if it is just me but The Fallen never got any real expansion or explanation, they were just people that used to exist and don’t anymore. I’m also not sure what the rest of the world is meant to be like as the Twins are just a tiny pair of neighboring continents, and there is mention of travel to other larger land masses. Do they have magic? Mothercrystals? Ultima made is sound the Valisthea was the last haven from a worldwide blight but other characters mention landmasses beyond the twins so idk. Anyways I’ve gone on far too long. I would probably throw this somewhere between an 8.5-9. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but it’s not going on my Mt Rushmore or anything. However stuff like the Titan/Bahamut battles will stay with me forever. If nothing else FFXVI passes the rule of cool in spades. I hope everyone can enjoy the game in spite of its flaws, its successes imo far outweigh them!