Final Fantasy XVI was my choice for game of the year last year for so many reasons. The combat system perfectly blends both creative strategizing and skillful execution. The story is fantastic and refreshingly fantasy, with writing that exceeds expectations. Even the side quests are written well, prioritizing character and world-building over mundane content. Every single frame of the game can work as its own piece of art, with gorgeous environments and graphics that are impressive even for the PS5. I can’t think of a game with environments that look better than FFXVI. Maybe the FFVII remakes; whoever’s working on the skyboxes at Square Enix needs a raise. Everything is perfect in FFXVI except it just needs one mechanic that makes players feel more at home in the game.
The one thing that I find lacking in FFXVI is that there’s not much forcing you to fully absorb each map. Most RPGs are overinflated with content. They make you grind out experience, quests, amassing crafting materials, collectibles, treasures, skill trees, currencies. Sonic Frontiers had like 60 different currencies … why? I’m not a big fan of grind, it’s mostly just a way to waste enough of your time that you feel you got your money’s worth. But the greatest benefit to grinding in games is that it forces you to embrace all of the environments. By the end of a game, you’ll know every nook and cranny because you’ve had to spend hours there digging around for treasures and such.
FFXVI needs something to emulate that feeling without ruining it with a mundane grind. Thankfully, there’s one perfect mechanic from Final Fantasy’s past that FFXVI needs.
One Simple Mechanic That Would Make FFXVI a Perfect Game – Rising Tide
FFXVI Can Learn From the Past
Final Fantasy had been stale for over two decades before FFXVI came along and gave it new life. But when it comes to making their maps memorable, they didn’t even do as good a job as FFXII. I’m not a big fan of FFXII, I find the story boring and most of the mechanics unengaging. I enjoyed the Zodiac Age remaster more with 4x speed turned on. If you’re enjoying a game more while fast-forwarding through it, there’s an issue. But to this day, I still remember all the maps perfectly and I’ve only played through it a few times. It’s mostly because of the tedious grinding that I explained earlier but because of that, I have a palpable feeling of nostalgia for it.
I feel an emotional connection to a lot of the enemies in that game because of all the time I spent trying to get the right drops from them. The best thing about FFXII was the hunts and FFXVI brought those over which made a great inclusion.
Leviathan rears his head
Travel Is Important
I played FFXVI again recently and I still get lost tracing through a bunch of the paths in my head. FFXVI’s side quests do have you running around the maps collecting things but it’s too directed. You’re more just running in between map markers than getting a genuine feel for the environment. And while the fast travel locations do make things more efficient, it does mean there’s very little actual exploring. With the fast travel and your Chocobo, the environments become an afterthought as you race to your next quest marker.
What FFXVI needs is something that makes you engage with the maps but isn’t grindy. The best way to avoid grind is first to make a solid core loop and then make content that fits in that loop. Thankfully, FFXVI has one of the best core loops out there with its combat system. So the perfect mechanic I can think FFXVI needs is the monster arena from FFX.
Drenching a frog in water doesn’t seem like much of a punishment
Monster Arena
Final Fantasy X is mostly linear until you reach the endgame and it opens up, unlocking up a bunch of side stuff and minigames to do. One of which is the monster arena. I don’t think the monster arena was perfect for FFX, it was a little tedious. The monster arena had you capturing monsters from every map in the game. Once you caught ten of every species, or every monster in a given area, you unlocked a bunch of rewards and the ability to fight a supercharged version of that monster or of bosses that you encountered throughout the game. Most of which were just reskins of monsters you’d already fought. It was the most rewarding side quest in the game, giving you the best materials for weapon customization and other stuff.
So Why Wasn’t It Great Back Then?
The only thing making it not so great for FFX is the random encounters. As you run around the maps, there’s only a chance of fighting the monster that you’re hunting for. For the super rare monsters, this can take forever. And the feeling of entering a battle and not getting the monster you want can be draining. That being said, it still worked. I love every environment in FFX and have every single map memorized for life. It’s one of my favorite games because of this, and the story and combat are amazing. Whenever I replay FFX, I feel at home on every screen. I still love running through the Calm Lands even though I’ve spent hours there farming for Ogres. And that’s the feeling I want from FFXVI.
There’re some solid boss fights in RIsing Tide
How to Implement It
There are only a couple of things I would change from the FFX monster arena. Most importantly, have differing capture requirements based on rarity. In FFX, you had to catch ten of everything. So if your monster has only a 10% spawn rate, you better get yourself comfortable.
I imagine for really common enemies, you would have to kill like 50 of them but only 3 of the super rare enemies. This would make it so you can’t just turn your brain off when you’re running to your next quest marker. You’ll be running along and see some enemies and think “Ooh, I still need a few of them” instead of tuning them out like I do currently. Also, when you see a rare enemy in the wild, you have to remember that location for when you need to come back and farm them, creating more landmarks for you to familiarize yourself with.
They finally brought in Tonberries and I love them
What would also be interesting is if there were spawn requirements for certain enemies. I’m imagining something like you might get a prompt from a side quest saying something like ‘Behemoths hate birds’ and with that knowledge alone, you have to figure out to kill every bird in the area to get Behemoths to spawn. These ideas aren’t new, you see stuff like this in RPGs all the time, but FFXVI would truly benefit because of how great the enemies are. Every enemy has their own attack patterns that need learning, and some abilities work best depending on the enemy. Hunting the monsters won’t be a tedious grind because you have to have skill.
The Rewards
It wouldn’t work the same as FFX in terms of the item rewards because FFXVI doesn’t have much in terms of equipment loads or customization. But the arena can work the same. It wouldn’t take much work to reskin all the enemies and tweak their values to make them super difficult. They’ve already done this to some degree with the Hunts mechanic. They’ve already got the Hall of Virtue as the perfect arena to stage the battles. And they could do interesting things like make some super enemies immune to Zantetsuken damage or whatever so you have to rethink your Eikons and abilities.
FFXVI’s world is rich with lore, so that too could be a reward. It would be nice to have a bestiary that tells you about the monsters. Their genealogy and place within the world. And you’d have to beat each monster’s super variant to learn more about them. The biggest reward comes from the feeling of growing attuned to the world of FFXVI. The best way to connect to any fantasy world is through the flora and fauna, and in a game like FFXVI, that’s represented the monsters. The true reward is the feeling of nostalgia you’ll get years from now when you revisit FFXVI.
Balls of water frozen in time
Is It Too Much?
There’s already quite a lot in FFXVI. The Hunts are great, and they have you searching around the maps. But the game tells you where they are, it doesn’t take too long to discover their location then you just beat them and move on to the next. You’re not truly engaging with the environment those hunts are in. The side quests give great context to the world but it’s all cerebral rather than tactile. Again, you’re not forced to actually feel the environment. I’m writing this article because I find myself far too often running past everything in the game and I think that’s sad. Of course, I have the option of fighting everything but why would I if the game isn’t asking me to?
There are other things to do in the game like the Level Replays and Chronoliths, but they’re skill-based challenges and have little to do with the environments. Looking for Chronoliths provides some exploration but too little in my eyes. All I’m advocating for is something to incentivize us to engage with the fodder rather than ignore it. And, of course, the monster arena would be completely optional. So those who want to breeze through still can. But those of us who want something a little extra get more of this amazing game. All that being said, with or without a monster arena-like mechanic, FFXVI is still fantastic so go play it! Rising Tide is out!
This battle is so epic
