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Blockbuster JRPGs like Final Fantasy 16 are known for their devotion to spectacle, but I must ask – exactly when do we hit the point of diminishing returns? I think FFXVI might have passed that threshold, as it's not uncommon for even a minor melee with a few orcs to become an impenetrable haze of particle effects, projectiles, auras, explosions, emanations, radiations, radiances, and, look, I don't mean to sound like a confused grandma peering affrontedly through her inch-thick spectacles, but I can't tell what the fuck is happening in half of these fights, damn it!
This isn't a matter of slowed reactions or confusing camera angles. No, I mean that I literally can't see the fight happening at all. Even the standard powers unlocked through the story generate such enormous clouds of fizzing magical excess that Clive and whatever frightened Chocobo he's going Super Saiyan on are completely concealed; like they're in one of those big all-encompassing dust clouds that Scooby-Doo characters love to fight in. Reflexes and reaction times don't mean anything when you can't even see anyone involved, and there's no skill level that'll let you peer through a dozen layers of crackling energy to the fight that, presumably, is happening somewhere in the middle of it all. Clearly – or rather, unclearly – this is a problem.
Blinded by the light
Wondering what we though of the game as a whole? Check out our Final Fantasy 16 review here!
My initial impulse was to call this an accessibility issue – but that may not be the right word for it, unless we count it as just plain inaccessible to human beings - though now I think of it, I can't help but wonder how those who struggle with more intense visuals handle something so gleefully aggressive on the eyes. Nonetheless, nobody can see through something that's largely opaque, and as the plot rattled on and fights got increasingly excessive and more determined to melt my PS5's innards, I found myself forced to rely on muscle memory over anything my eyes and ears were actually telling me, because, honestly? They weren't telling me jack.
I can't imagine that's the intended experience. Sure, muscle memory might help you recall how your own attacks work, but it doesn't tell you anything about what the enemy is doing. Those cartoon clouds I mentioned are something I rarely walked out of; I was more often ejected, at speed, when a sword, spell or tentacle I didn't even know existed hit Clive square in the haircut and sent him hurtling across the battlefield. If the enemy is too much of a brute to be stunlocked by your attacks, they can just fire back from behind a smokescreen of obscuring magic that you yourself created.
I think this is the first time I've seen the power of the PS5 processor used for evil. At the very least it feels like an enabler – again, we all know JRPGs like their spectacle, but that impulse has clearly reached the point where more is being lost than gained, and it's a problem that's consistent across the game. Nothing isn't dialled right up to eleven - even the simple act of parrying causes the screen to smear incomprehensibly - and the issue as a whole really isn't helped by some very busy visual design on the characters and monsters alike. When two Eikons are whaling on each other, as they often do, it's frequently hard to tell where one begins and the other ends.
And yet the big light shows aren't even where the game is most impressive, because after 40 hours of watching characters spontaneously fizz like Catherine wheels, I'm completely desensitized to it all. FFXVI impressed me far more when it ditched the fireworks and instead worked on scale, making things feel cataclysmically big. The Titan boss fight is the encounter that sticks with me, as it masters the idea of scale and size so effectively that it's almost vertigo-inducing, like staring up at a skyscraper from ground-level. But every time the boss fights simply set fire to everything and everyone, I just find myself zoning out.
Sorry Final Fantasy, I've seen it before – and I didn't see it very clearly the first time either.
