Jeremiah Robles

If you want to induce a headache, I would suggest you see this movie because that's what I left the theater with.

Definitely a must-own PS5 console exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI is a hand-crafted, on the edge of your seat gameplay experience made by a large group of passionate and talented individuals that have a story to tell. From start to finish, the story and gameplay hook you in immediately. Gameplay is a welcome deviation from turn-based fighting to combat that is akin to hack-and-slash greats like the Devil May Cry series and Azura’s Wrath. Despite this comparison, Final Fantasy XVI’s combat makes a name for itself with its highly polished, tight-knit, and highly customizable combat. Fighting is a seamless experience that feels well fleshed out by its developers. There are likely dozens of ways you can approach FFXVI’s combat, which makes each individual player’s fighting style and gameplay experience unique. Up until the end of the game, new fun gameplay mechanics and features are seamlessly given to the player, but never feels like a burden. Players are able to customize their gameplay experience with dozens of fun perks and abilities that each drastically change fights in their own way. With the many tools that the developers provide you, they give many more to its enemies and bosses. Enemy and boss encounters are challenging endeavors to seek your teeth into, but never frustrating. FFXVI provides its series with some of the best designed boss fights in gaming. Each boss fight in the game feels uniquely different from each other as the developers constantly create uniquely designed encounters that show the growth of strength of the main character. Each boss encounter feels and looks like they were extensively worked on for many painstaking months just to achieve the level of complexity and animation and will never see the same fight twice. Enemy encounters are smaller and less in variety, but it does its job gameplay wise. FFXVI holds itself up to be of those recommended to be the best in the series with its rich, complex narrative and memorable, hand-crafted characters. The main story provides a unique, gripping experience that always makes you yearn for more to which the game happily provides. The story will make you laugh, cry, and sympathize for its many cast of characters. Every side quest feels important and provides unique tales of intrigue that shed light into its story’s enticing setting. A great innovation that the game transfers over from the recent FFVII Remake is the introduction of the “eavesdropping” mechanic. Instead of the RPG genre’s stereotype where you have to talk to each person individually to hear what they have to say, you now just have to walk by and listen in on what they have to say. You will find that the game includes hundreds of voice actors in the credits, and most likely over a couple thousand spoken lines of dialogue. This amount of effort for its small no-name characters, (to which most actually have their own name and title) help make the game feel alive and that every main event in the game actually affects the world. Attention to detail is incredibly well placed in this game as you will find yourself becoming surprisingly interested in the development of the recurrent no-name characters of each of the game’s townships despite the many hours you will put into this game. FFXVI is a worthwhile game experience that I loved to get invested in. Its story, combat, setting, relationships with characters, lived-in world, and amazing grandscale boss battles provided much to enjoy for 2023. I believe this game is a unique and worthwhile entry to the series of Final Fantasy and I hope that you enjoy it too!

Loved the game, definitely a step in the right direction for future titles. Like wow, the world feel so full and populated. I'm surprised on how much assets they made for this game. They went so hard they made 3 alterations to the entire map with the seasons. Like Jesus Christ dudes. Hogwarts and the world feel so full and alive with secrets and areas to explore. Every area is unique and handcrafted. Like seriously, it's scary how much modeling and texturing these guys had to do. The gameplay is pretty cool, the spells are always fun to aquire and use in battle. Can't wait to see what else portkey games can do with the millions of assets they've Made

My mouth was constantly open in awe and my eyes were constantly filled with tears of love for the amazing work the team of Santa Monica Studio passionately put together to form this absolute gift and hallmark to video game history.

Never in my life would I think that a card game would make me cry. I feel empty knowing the journey is over.

Yeaahh, Pixar got Disnified. In a bad way. The story was just bad, and unoriginal unlike Pixar has been in the past. That was just it. It was a cool concept for a movie but eh. Nothing negative about the representation.

I honestly love the amount of heart and passion that went into this film!