Final Fantasy 16 Still Seems Like a PS5 Must Have, But a Couple of Niggles Need to Be Addressed | Push Square

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Earlier in the year, after playing through a tailored demo designed specifically to showcase Final Fantasy 16’s combat systems, we described the action-heavy PS5 exclusive as a bonafide Game of the Year contender. With publisher Square Enix seemingly intent on showing as much of the sequel as possible, we’ve since played several more hours of the release, and our opinion largely remains unchanged. However, glowing as we were in that initial assessment, we did come away from our latest demo a little less impressed.

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We chat for 20 minutes with Naoki Yoshida et al

We got to play a lot of the game – including the entire first chapter and a meaningful chunk of the next one. As we said in our previous preview, the presentation is on par with what you’d expect from a Sony first-party, and the developer deserves credit for seriously improving the quality of the script and voice acting compared to past entries, without losing any of the distinctive anime-inspired qualities that makes Final Fantasy, well, Final Fantasy.

The opening is breathless, although we’d argue that’s to the title’s detriment. While we’re already familiar the overarching fiction from past presentations – the world of Valisthea is broken up into several different regions, all surrounding a neutral venue named the Crystalline Dominion, which comprises the epicentre of the story – we struggled to keep up with the politics in the opening cutscenes, and frankly felt a little lost.

This is probably intentional, as the game pulls the classic story-telling trick of starting out in the middle of a massive battle, before pumping the brakes and turning back time. When you reassume control of the unfortunately named Clive Rosfield, you’ll find him