Review: Final Fantasy XVI Is My Long Covid Companion

Since contracting Covid for a second time some months ago, I’ve suffered from bone-deep fatigue that has slowly dissipated without fully going away. As a result, my ability to play games late into the night (the only time I have available to do so) has been severely affected. To stay awake (going against my ‘no caffeine past 3pm’ policy) I’ll often make a half-measure coffee around 8:30pm, something that would usually keep me awake into the wee hours contemplating cringe-inducing memories from my youth. But I’m sleeping like a baby, so I guess that’s at least one positive from good old long-C.

The point I’m coming around to is that this has created something of a two-sided requirement for my gaming engagement. Prior to this, I could stick with one game for weeks in a state of stubborn focus, working through until completion and, in rare instances, opting to mop up trophies/achievements as something of an italicised expression my enjoyment. Now, for me to enjoy playing something it must suit my mood and energy levels. It needs be either so full of mindless action as to keep me in a state of attention-juggled rapture, or (in times of tiredness) something on the more soothing side. The latter often results in my slow descent into slumber as I play, then starting awake, controller in hand, wondering how long I nodded off for (even with a token measure of caffeine imbibed).

Final Fantasy XVI is, in turns, a game of both kinds. It is a series of virtual vestibules that I can safely push through with heavy-lidded inattention. Very occasionally, every few hours, it’s a spectacular action extravaganza that finds me mashing buttons to whittle down the health bar of a ridiculously hale boss. Clive, our handsome, tattooed protagonist grunts his way through this ye-verily-forsooth medieval fantasy with eye-furrowed confusion and a propensity for yelling, ‘Fuck!’ with somewhat hilarious timing. It’s okay, Clive, I also had no idea what was going on most of the time.

There’s some very nice music in Final Fantasy XVI that also helps to lull me each night. I’ll be walking Clive around his home base, trying to convince the sour blacksmith that I’m worth being nice to, especially given how much money I’ve spent at his anvil, while the soft, folksy acoustic backing will call me towards Eyelid Town. As mentioned, this is thankfully a safe space. I can’t do anything irreversible in Final Fantasy XVI. I can’t fall anywhere to my death or irreparably make anyone angry or spend all my money if I fall asleep while playing. It’s a lovely, comforting feeling that I like a lot.

Everyone is beautiful in Final Fantasy XVI. Even the ugly people are beautiful. Their scars and tattoos are beautiful. The animals are handsome. It’s as if the entire main cast of characters are from a Scandinavian modelling agency, dressed in professionally weathered attire. Everyone is also very white, which is strange given that Black people most definitely existed in Medieval Europe. Square Enix has rightly been called out on this. It’s even more baffling when you get to an area of the game that clearly feels based on the arid Middle East, only to find it entirely populated by pale agency plebs.

There’s quite a bit of gruesome death in this game, but it all feels a bit light, as if these pretty people are collectable dolls being used to show the concept of violence, rather than it translating as anything particularly impactful or tragic. Characters can get limbs chopped off but not seem to be in much pain. Villagers and children are summarily slaughtered, yet still the jaunty music plays on when you revisit the region, and the shop guy is happy to greet and sell you some extra potions.

An additional aide in terms of comfort and safety is Final Fantasy XVI’s inbuilt accessory system. You can equip up to 3 of them, with each one providing some buff or passive skill. The one I’ve kept on the whole time makes Clive automatically evade any attack that would hurt him. It pretty much offers an invincibility mode, although he does still get hurt if he is inside an area of attack or in the middle of an animated move instigated by the player. While I’m not prone to narcolepsy during fights or boss encounters, it still brings a sense of calm and assurance to my experience to know that I need not fully engage with the stress of difficulty.

I mentioned the bosses up top. They are basically interactive cutscenes. The game pulses between boss encounters with long build ups, and when they arrive you’d best have a good hour or so to spare, because each one is a rollercoaster ride of behemoth-boasting, shape-shifting, world-destroying, kaiju-pummelling extravagance that gives Bayonetta a run for its money. They get the blood pumping just enough to distract you from the fact what you mostly do it press L1 and spam Square to keep the scene playing, often rolling through multiple boss forms with renewed health bars, as well as a contractual number of times when Clive transitions from human form to Ifrit, a massive fire demon. These sequences are so epic that you can only imagine the devastation at ground level as these monsters fight each other – armies decimated in explosions and lasers and all manner of elemental collateral damage.

If the boss fights sound almost worth the price of admission, what about the other 40 hours? Well, so much of Final Fantasy XVI is run of the mill. Every side mission is throwaway and generic, almost to the point of parody, yet delivered with such seriousness that you don’t know whether to laugh or cringe. The very first side mission you do is go across the room to a guy and ask for some wood, then go back to the original quest giver and deliver said wood, while never actually looking like you’ve collected and/or delivered any wood. Why couldn’t they just walk over and do it themselves? Every other side mission is like this, some requiring you to travel to different areas to collect three flowers or whatever. They are all absolute timewasters. But I did them dutifully. Because I didn’t want the comfort to end.

Around 15 hours in, it becomes clear that the entire game is going to follow a repeated formula wherein you’ll do five or six hours of busy work before the lead up to a mission to destroy a mother crystal, which will involve one or more boss battles, then back to hours of running back and forth chasing a red main mission icon. The fighting system is repetitive and simple, the pocketed worlds sparse and lifeless, and none of the Eikon-related skills are particularly covetable. In fact, I cared so little about the skills that I let my skill points build up for hours and then just held down the left thumbstick on the menu to let the game auto-spend on them. I think I only utilised about half.

During a recent catch up with my best friend, he asked me if I felt Final Fantasy XVI was worth buying. I had to pause before I answered him, and when I did, he filled the space with an additional question: is it better than Final Fantast XV? With a hesitant grimace, I had to explain to him that while I am enjoying XVI very much, I don’t feel that it’s something I’ll feel compelled to go back to. It feels like a once-through kind of game, albeit a 50 hour once-through. I told him I could just lend him my copy once I’ve mopped up everything I want to do. Also that, yes, it’s better than XV. There’s more focus to the experience, a lack of which caused me to peter off with XV and never return to it.

Final Fantasy XVI is itching to talk about how original it is. Pause a story scene and you can read entries on the histories and motivations of each character in that scene. These update as the story progresses, yet after the first few hours, I found myself caring less for such guidance, instead opting to let the names of places and circular motivations of nefarious characters wash over me without much care for whether I parsed the unfolding drama.

While I may be risking RSI from nightly button-mashing, it’s become something of a hypnotic routine to load Final Fantasy XVI up, let the pleasantly medieval soundtrack tickle my ears, and press forward, thumbs at the ready to mash for a handful of hours, safe in the knowledge that I’m strapped into this ride – it’s going somewhere. Sure, the circuitous turns might loop around on themselves, and the underlying structure is obviously designed to string you out for tens of hours, but its combination of ebb-and-flow gameplay, grape-vine maps and War of the Roses ridiculousness makes this action-focused fantasy feel far from final.