As someone that enjoy action games and jrpg I liked the direction Final Fantasy took with XV, I like it that much that I think the ps4/ps5 games are on an Era (no pun intended) of their own, like the original era of Sakaguchi's snes games, or Kitase's experimental era on the ps1. To me this is the action era and deserves my thoughts and words on this topic, I hope you all enjoy!
BEFORE YOU READ:
- I'll be reviewing games in the following categories: Story, Combat and Sidecontent. Graphics and Music are honestly all 10/10 on all this games so it would be kinda pointless lol
- I'll not be reviewing Remake to not make information repetitive, but I'll mention it on the foundations it set for Rebirth.
STORY:
Final Fantasy XV - 6/10
The most obsessed fans knows that XV suffered from development problems, as Nomura, the original director left the project and was substituted by Hajime Tabata. The turbulent development resulted in a story that suffered from important events happening off-screen, others on movies, anime and even a book that contained the true ending rendering some plot points useless if you don't want to engage with all that media. Despite all that Final Fantasy XV has some cool concepts and the events that we got on the game delivered strong emotions.
Final Fantasy XVI - 9/10
Some fans suspect that the poor executed story from XV motivated the next game to put most of it's efforts on this category, and boy, they were successful. With well timed time-skips, family drama, a good cast of villains and a bold open ending that rocked the online discussions this game was almost perfect on it's story execution. The only thing that stains this epic story is some poor paced main-quests that took you out of Clive's jorney to run errands around the world and some underdeveloped characters like Jill who kept going back and forth with her arc of facing her abusers only to kept getting done dirty again agaisnt some villains.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - 7.5/10
I know the devs of this game must've been stressing when writting this story, it adapts the mid-game of the OG, being forced to end the game on a cliffhanger since the conclusion of the whole jorney will happen only in the third game. Like Remake this one expands a lot of the short plot points we saw on the 1997 game, giving personality to NPC's and even creating some new faces. The devs did a good job at pacing each story arc and delivering engaging misteries and drama, but oh boy, do they fumbled the ending... the whole multiverse setting doesn't seem to impact much the story when you look back, but it certainly added a lot of confusion to it's most iconic scene. Zack Fair being the main example, he was teased a lot on the marketing of the game only to have 30 playable minutes in a 70 hours game, he probably is going to be important on the third game but he didn't add nothing to the story besides running around the entire time and being present for 5 minutes during the final fight.
COMBAT:
Final Fantasy XV - 6/10
Style over substance, you're able to see nice animations on the screen while holding circle to attack, while holding square makes you dodge 90% of the incoming attacks, you don't even need to time your dodges. Despite the shallow of it's controls XV at least delivers synergy with your ally skills that can buff and crowd control. It can be quite relaxing but on late game bosses it becomes quite boring.
Final Fantasy XVI - 9/10
Square Enix went all in with this one, even hiring one big name of Devil May Cry 5 to help with it, and you can clearly see it. Clive can do a healm breaker, a stinger, enemy step, exceed each of his attacks with spells. Don't even get me started on the eikon's skills, you can customize Clive all you want to set up the combos you want and have all the self-expression you want on the action genre. The only sin is only having one playable character and not letting you play on hard difficulty from the start where the enemy encounters are even more engaging.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - 10/10
I was a big fan of what they did on Remake, the mix of ATB gauge + real time action was a genius move that only got better on Rebirth, it was tricky to balance a real time action where you need to fill a gauge to use skills and itens, but they managed to make the regular attacks interesting and unique between each character, and by having to fill a gauge you are forced to strategize what will you chose to spend your action, truly feeling like the most faithful conclusion to the combat system of the series.
SIDE CONTENT:
Final Fantasy XV - 9/10
This is where FFXV shines, spending time with your bros on the road, setting up camps, fishing, looking at Prompto's photos and hunting wild beasts, it really helps you to connect with the guys. The side quests are mostly fetch quests with only a few that have some nice buildup and conclusion. The post-game also unlocks some hard dungeons that will have you on your toes.
Final Fantasy XVI - 5/10
There just isn't much to do besides the main story, the side quests are mostly fetch quests and you can fight some bosses on the map, but there is no mini-games and exploring the world doesn't give you any good rewards like loot or optional dungeons. At least the optional bosses are tons of fun, without them the score would be much lower.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth - 10/10
There is just soooo many things to do, side quests with a proper storyline, rewards everywhere for the ones who likes exploring, optional bosses and tons of mini-games, some of them (the gilgamesh ones and the Queen's Blood) even feels like a whole independent game inside your Rebirth bluray.
CONCLUSION
The action era started with some struggles, trying to find it's own identity distancing itself from the turn-based usual combat, you can see this generation of action based games shaping itself slowly as XVI addresses most complaints of XV while Rebirth perfects the nostalgia of the original combat system with the new action philosophy. I'd say FF17 and the last part of the FF7 trilogy are going to be bangers if the devs keep addressing the weak part of their games and building on the best ones.
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