Did Ff16 Flop?

Because it had been so long since another mainline number was released and XIV 2.0 had done so well, people were very hyped that another entry would be really good. All the trailers and demo footage looked good and so people assumed the gameplay would be fun. They were of course wrong but by then they had already committed to buying it and felt they had to defend their choice. This in turn sent a positive buy signal to SE, who then repeated the exact same pattern.

Years later we can look back and realize how bad it was and that our support of XV is what lead directly to XVI. This is also why I refused to buy XV on release, even though this forum was full of defenders trying to justify it. "Supporting" a company doing a bad product just reinforces the decisions that lead to that bad product and will result in another bad product. Sales are the only language companies know how to speak.

the battle system isn't even that bad in 16, there are some fun combinations of powers from different summons that are pretty enjoyable, and the whole system is similar to many other action rpgs, certainly not substantially worse. most of the bosses are pretty forgettable though, and there is literally zero incentive to care about gear at all.

most of CBU3 style involves steering the player to the next cutscene ad nauseum to tell the story exactly the way they want you to see it, and removing player decisions entirely, which is why it feels significantly more constricting than say ff10 or ff13 which are both also linear/hallway simulators but better received as FF titles.

for whatever reason, I never got around to playing 15. only one in the series I never even gave a shot.

FFXIV hallmarks ruin the game and it's pacing for the most part.

The music, surprisingly overall is very forgettable, given the composers usual success.

"Dungeons" are 2x trash packs 1x boss, repeat.

The sidequests don't really pertain to any relevancy to the story or the world for the most part. "Go fetch my favourite Bucket, Clive!"

The last 1/4 of the game is a Zantesuken spam when the combat becomes really hollow and shallow.

Started off great, middle to end-game is just a slog and you're kind of glad when the game finally ends.

XVIs music was unforgettable? That’s gotta be a hot take haha.

Unforgettable?

No, I said "very forgettable, a lot of it wasn't great, which is odd considering the music in XIV is usually very memorable.

There's likely a lot of factors in it. I'm nearly sure the composer was going through cancer treatment at the time.

Square Enix are so down bad it's sad to see.

They can't make good games anymore, they don't know who their audience is, they exist off member berries and locked in audiences. FF14 is a clown show now, they have a massive cashshop in which the prices keep getting higher, the updates are slower and slower, yoshida is like a middle manager constantly telling them they can't afford to do things, and they recently did a crossover (of many) with a chicken wings restaurant.

They had all the known devs eating chicken wings like *** (doritos and mountain dew next no doubt), posted the pictures for all to see and have a chicken wing emote in the game.

It's wild to me that ff14 players have just become used to this level of selling out and money sucking. The level of money desperation from these cucks running the game is embarrassing.

You know they frog in slowly boiling watered the players so they are all used to it, but if you come along after not being involved for years it's a fking clown show.

What they are doing is making more and more money from the mmorpg division, cutting costs harder and harder and just putting all the extra money they are making into profits to offset the losses form the other failures.

It's cringe.

intentionally or not, they really did carbon copy blizzard and wow. and retail wow is in exactly the same position right now.

My bad autocorrect hates me. I meant forgettable. Typo aside.

Musically I thought it was a banger, but what tickles everyone’s music bells is different.

Story I actually didn’t mind at all. It was the gameplay that, while fun, was rather flat and hollow. I can appreciate SE always trying different systems as is tradition, but you can tell that a lot of dev time was pulled from XVI to put into VII

I think FFXVI's music was one of it's best parts. That being said I'd understand if the pieces were not "catchy" but they definitely weren't forgettable. Heck I listen to Phoenix's Theme "Away" all the time and it still gets me hype.

I couldn't hum a single bar from any song on FF16 OST. If you played something for me and didn't tell me where it came from, I might enjoy it quite a bit, but wouldn't be able to create the connection to the game on my own. Completely forgettable.

I liked some of the tracks tbh, but that never excuses how terribad the game is. That's one thing xiv does well at least. The main battle theme was nice for 16

It is a hot take. My friend has the same opinion, but he just doesn't like Souken's music at all. The thing is, despite Souken often credited as the main composer, Uematsu was actually quite involved with 14's soundtrack, always composing the main themes of every game and expansion (Answers, Dragonsong etc), up untill Stormblood I think, and we know how the motifs of the main theme get remixed and reused. Overall, FF14's music was great (encounters, cities, overworld) and augmented the experience pretty well.

Speaking of FF14:

Every game SE has released lately



SE so far gone I don't even get the itch to play the classics anymore... accept chrono trigger

Sorry but.. you think this music is good?

Stranger of Paradise had a solid OST.

But FF music peaked in 1994

I cannot imagine thinking Soken's music is bad.

The thing about Soken's music is, there is a lot less emphasis placed on each individual track, but a lot of emphasis placed on motifs that run through sections of the soundtrack. These motifs are most memorable in the 'full' versions of pieces that the motif shows up in.

I don't remember much of FFXVI's music. But I heard the Leviathan fight theme once, the bahamut fight theme once, and the Greatwood themes once, and each of those central motifs are in my head forever now. For better or worse, those motifs cover like a good 1/4 of the soundtrack.

As far as Soken vs. the other FF composers:
Uematsu used motifs like this, but it didn't feel like he was relying on them to fill out a soundtrack. Not saying this is good or bad, but there is a lot of reputation in FFXVI's music.

Mizuta (FFXI Composer) uses a ton of really esoteric musical techniques, (most notably, maintaining tonics while switching back and forth between major and minor scales) particularly in the newer soundtracks, so he's hard to compare to Uematsu and Soken imo.

Stormblood was particularly notable for reusing the same motif in seemingly every song, but Soken undeniably has tons of variety and a huge body of work.

I think what Uematsu did with the SNES limitations was absolutely amazing.

Hard to really compare the two 1:1

Soken is the undeniable king of range and variety. It's one of the things he is absolutely best at. If you have a wide taste in music, there will never be another soundtrack like FFXIV, and this quality extends to FFXVI to some degree as well.

If you told me that a piece of videogame music would involve a tempo of around 200 bpm with lyrical melody that incorporated 16tth notes on a violin and accompanying third interval, I wouldn't have believed you. But Soken goes and writes Ascension for FFXVI.

I still prefer Uematsu overall. I agree that his 2dFF soundtracks are some of the most amazing, given his constraints. But the dude is unbelievably talented, so hearing his more recent soundtracks with fewer technical limitations has been amazing.

Don't be. I posted the trailer because it just dropped, not to showcase/as testament to how magnificent 14's OST is.

If you think about it, mainline FFs have underwent several changes from 1 to 16, but, to my knowledge, Uematsu is the only core member of the original creators who has remained as a dev member in the same lead position till like.. 10? Still with heavy contributions to the online titles (11's Memoro de la Ŝtono and it's odes, Ronfaure, etc) and 14. To me, FF without Uematsu is not the same, and loses some of its magic. He has always been a core ingredient of the FF experience for me (despite enjoying main and spin-off titles not composed by him).

Uematsu is possibly the only "celebrity" I want to shake their hands and thank them for their hard work because of how much it meant to me. I never studied music, so I can't really "rank" him amongst composers, but I hope he gets the recognition I feel he deserves as a musician outside of videogames.

All FF games have had one thing in common, they were all aimed at teenagers. ff16 went against this.

This is as dumb as making a game of thrones inspired mario rpg or pokemon (there is a reason pokemon intentionally looks like ***), just cause the audience are all 35 it doesn't mean you should change what the product is. They expect it to be what it has always been.

Dmc5 was corny as hell and obviously aimed at middle aged teenagers, they get it but SE /Yoshida does not.

man max looks young as *** and ela looks like a baby. now I just feel old, thanks.

Square Enix are screwed tbh, they have a terrible reputation in Japan so they cannot hire good people. Everyone that is talented wants to work at Capcom or Fromsoft, and since there is a shortage of devs who tf wants to work at SE?

They can't get new people, the creatives they have left all suck and are near retirement, the suits are fixated with pandering to western values and stock prices.

Train wreck, if I had money in SE I would dump it.

Well it's from 7 years ago!

i dunno, they are just really really slow to react to changes in player demands, whether because they think they know better or have poor methods of gathering accurate data about what their customers actually want. nothing particularly special about SE in that regard.

with 11 for example, they intentionally made it a global game from day 1 but had zero way to get feedback from non-JP players for nearly a decade.

if you watched any of the fanfest presentation yesterday, they did acknowledge quite a few of the problems the lifers have with ff14. whether or not the changes they implement are enough is debatable, but seeing Yoshida admit openly that things are boring and out of touch is encouraging. the only reason he did that is because dawntrail cost them lots of money. that's the only real way to get through to these big corps.

sure, but i'm sorry that is one of the worst uses of audio i've ever seen in a trailer.

the music is horrible and you can't even really hear what the story teller is saying over the horrible music.

not that she's even telling a good story anyways.. "land nice, land cold, some saved the land". i really wish i was being pedantic here.. maybe it sounds better in japanese lmao