Final Fantasy XVI Review: Return of an Icon
Final Fantasy, Square Enix's long running series of sprawling, epic role-playing video games, occupies a revered and deeply sentimental place in the relatively short history of gaming. Early Final Fantasy titles established themselves as pinnacles among their peers, with their high-end visuals, deep narrative, and distinct characters helping the games shape the medium itself. A generation of gamers have grown up on Final Fantasy, and these games have left a formidable footprint on impressionable hearts and minds.
However, after a string of beloved titles that are to this day held up as some of the best games ever made, Final Fantasy lost its way. Subsequent games failed to live up to high expectations and as other modern franchises grew popular, the series somewhat lost its cultural foothold. Final Fantasy became a glorious relic of the past, its relevance dwindling in a shifting gaming landscape.
Reinvention, however, has remained a hallmark of Final Fantasy. The franchise is less of a series than it is an anthology of standalone games that do not share their worlds or the primary protagonists who inhabit them. Each mainline title harbours its own setting and storyline. The games do, however, share a common ethos. They borrow generously from popular culture and feature recurring motifs, both in name and nature. And while Final Fantasy narratives play out on a grand scale, they also paint affecting personal portraits of their heroes and villains.
Final Fantasy XVI, Street Fighter 6, Diablo IV, and More: New Games in June
That's why Final Fantasy XVI, the series' latest reinvention, feels like a rebirth. The long-awaited sixteenth main instalment in the franchise, which released June 22 exclusively on the PS5,
Read more on gadgets.ndtv.com
