With Closing Fantasy 16, traditions have been damaged. From a real-time fight system that rewards trendy play to an absence of emphasis on social gathering members, with gameplay as an alternative specializing in a singular character. Regardless of this, nonetheless, Closing Fantasy 16 was nicely accepted when it first got here out on the PS5 final 12 months. The brand new PC launch additionally manages to offer a superb excuse to revisit the epic fantasy journey.
Let’s get one of the necessary issues out of the best way. The PC port of Closing Fantasy 16 is downright incredible. It supplies loads of graphical choices to tinker with, and manages to play surprisingly nicely with mouse and keyboard controls. I’d nonetheless, nonetheless, advocate utilizing a controller to play, since Closing Fantasy 16 is a reasonably fast-paced sport and the frantic motion would possibly find yourself being a straightforward to smash your mouse’s switches.
Operating the sport on a mid to excessive ranged PC—AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 32GB of DDR5 6000 MHz RAM and an AMD Radeon 7800 XT—was easy with each setting pumped as much as its highest setting. Enabling AMD’s FSR 3.1 setting working at native decision additionally meant that I used to be capable of get nicely over 100 frames per second whereas taking part in at a decision of 1440p.
Surprisingly, the sport’s framerates did sometimes dip all the way down to the excessive 60s, however the prevalence was so uncommon that it signifies that the dip was the results of the sport loading in additional giant belongings within the background. Curiously, regardless of working its cutscenes at 30 frames per second, the sport was capable of seamlessly transition between gameplay and cutscene with out a lot in the best way of drastic or dips in body charges.
“The PC port of Closing Fantasy 16 is downright incredible.”
With all of that out of the best way, it’s additionally value speaking in regards to the visuals within the PC launch of Closing Fantasy 16. Whereas it was already an incredible-looking sport again on the PS5 launch, the PC launch seems like gamers which have the programs to deal with it could get one of the best of each worlds—attractive visuals due to the commonly sooner {hardware} on trendy gaming PCs, in addition to steady excessive body charges, permitting for the motion gameplay to essentially shine by due to responsive controls.
The visuals particularly shine by when a few of Closing Fantasy 16’s a number of set items within the type of the Eikon battles come into play. Proper from the primary one you get on the finish of the prologue the place Phoenix faces off in opposition to Ifrit, the sense of scale offered by these set items is rivaled solely by both a number of the older motion video games. These battles are additionally the venue for a number of the most fascinating music. Whereas a whole lot of fights characteristic the enduring orchestral music that the Closing Fantasy 16 is understood and liked for, particular point out has to exit for tracks like Do or Die from the Titan struggle, and Catacecaumene from the Typhon struggle.
These extra eclectic tracks are joined by incredible orchestral items just like the theme track Land of Eikons, which blends parts of contemporary orchestral music with parts of traditional RPGs, and the bombastic monitor Away acts because the theme for one of many sport’s earlier set items.
“The visuals particularly shine by when a few of Closing Fantasy 16’s a number of set items within the type of the Eikon battles come into play.”
Closing Fantasy 16 additionally manages to have the darkest common tone and setting of any of the video games within the style and manages to kick issues off with what would possibly simply be one of many biggest prologues of any sport on the market. Whereas the participant is thrust into gameplay nearly instantly with the epic battle between Phoenix and Ifrit taking part in out, ultimately, protagonist Clive Rosfield is launched, and thru flashbacks, we get a extra full image of what went down 13 years in the past, which in the end led to a younger Clive being one of many solely survivors of a army operation, betrayed by his mom, and bought off into slavery.
Slavery is a reasonably main theme all through Closing Fantasy 16, and far of the sport’s earlier chapters revolves round exploring the world, the way it treats the folks that it has branded as slaves—known as Bearers—and the way the protagonists can go about altering this truth. Alongside the best way, the colourful forged of characters—Clive, Cid, Jill and Torgal—should additionally determine how they will cease the blight that’s slowly spreading all through the land of Valisthea, making the land uninhabitable for the reason that soil can’t assist life for vegetation and animals, and magic doesn’t work in blighted areas.
Closing Fantasy 16’s story is simply as grand and bombastic as one of the best of the style might need to supply, and the forged of protagonists will journey all around the world to finish their targets, which may vary from sparking rebel and destroying the enormous Mothercrystals which are believed to gasoline the magic within the space, to even participating in some political intrigue right here and there. Contemplating the sport’s large forged of characters, one in all its greatest options can be the Energetic Time Lore window, which mainly permits gamers to take a look at how totally different characters are associated to one another, why they could hate one another, and what their motivations is likely to be. The characteristic can be used mid-cutscene, simply in case you neglect who the characters at the moment within the scene is likely to be.
“One in all its greatest options can be the Energetic Time Lore window”
The one actual draw back in Closing Fantasy 16’s storyline is that it suffers from some pacing issues. Whereas the primary and remaining acts are excellently performed, there’s a center half the place the sport’s story comes grinding to a halt. Whereas this does provide some respite, since this a part of the story, which revolves round constructing an airship, after the moderately high-octane elements it comes on the heels of, the sequence of quests it’s important to do are fairly bland, typically being little greater than fetch quests, and undoubtedly go on for too lengthy. When you recover from this 5-7 hour hump, nonetheless, issues rapidly choose again up once more as Clive and Co. set their sights on the Mothercrystal on the capital of the Sanbreque empire.
The story additionally suffers by focusing nearly completely on Clive. Whereas he’s the protagonist of the sport, the dearth of an actual social gathering system implies that the supporting forged and crew get little to no display time, and even pivotal characters like Jill really feel moderately underdeveloped. This additionally applies to the villains, with characters like Annabella and Benedikta, whereas incredible antagonists in their very own rights, feeling fairly wasted since they only don’t seem within the story as typically as they need to have.
All this apart, Closing Fantasy 16 continues to be a incredible sport, and the PC launch now implies that extra gamers will get an opportunity to expertise one of the fascinating, darkish, and outwardly political tales within the style. Certain, its action-based gameplay would possibly appear to be it calls for an excessive amount of from you, however the gameplay itself has been tuned so finely that each newcomers to the style, in addition to skilled motion gamers will discover one thing to take pleasure in.
This sport was reviewed on PC.
