Get Played - We Play, You Play: Final Fantasy XVI

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt discuss this month's We Play, You Play: Final Fantasy XVI. They talk about their likes and dislikes about the new release, the Eikons, Active Time Lore, how it stacks up to other entries in the Final Fantasy series, and more! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd on patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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anyone need anything before the, this record gets started? Uh, no, I think I'm, I'm good to go. Uh, actually, um,

do you, Nick, would you mind handing me my water bottle? Uh, it's kind of over on your side of the table. Oh yeah. This one. Yeah.

The yellow one. Yeah. There you go. Thanks buddy. What was that? Was that a fucking side quest? Did I just complete a side quest? I really appreciate it. I'm thirsty and this is going to quench my thirst.

Wait. Wow, okay. I guess I could use the experience. Can I do one? I want to do one. Does anybody need something? I guess. Can you do one? I guess. Hey, actually,. Can I do one? I want to do one. Does anybody need something? I guess. Can you do one? I guess. Hey, actually, Matt, I do need your help with something. Okay, sure.

I took a few notes on this game for our record, and I'm wondering if you can... Can you just hand me my notepad? It's right there. Oh, yeah, sure. Here you go. Wow. Good job, Matt. right there oh yeah sure here you go wow good job i guess should i should i say if it works the other way uh hey heather actually i was like i'm having trouble connecting to the wi-fi locally can you just can you just get on your phone and like just share the password with me here you go buddy wait here you go buddy hey thanks wait but i didn't get anything from that like i didn't there was that wasn't a you just made me do something for no experience and no

gill like i've just like gave you oh the sound effect didn't play you didn't get you didn't get experience no i didn't get shit i just handed you a pass all right try it try a different one well i still will thank well thank you no fuck you give me the password back appreciation i don't want i'm i only all right fine all right fine if i don't i'll delete the password from my wife let's try it again here we go here we go no i'll share it with you nick here you go okay wow thanks for the experience in the in the gill you're welcome is this what wait so you guys can take side quests from me and get experience and you can give each other experience in side quests but i don't get any experience or side quests from either of you matt can i do one for you here yeah here have my sandwich have my sandwich oh thanks that was a good sandwich what you just fucking you ate it

a you ate it so fast i'm hungry also i didn't get any fucking i didn't get anything hand me it's like you were smuggling a condom into prison just Just fucking swallow this. I gotta find a way to get these condoms into prison. Hand me that paper clip. A condom full of something. Hand me that paper clip. Hand me the paper clip. Just hand me the paper clip. Okay, here.

Okay, great. So that's a side quest. We know the paper clip is active. So I'm gonna hand it back to you and see if I get any XP. I don't need it. It's not mine. No, you have to. I'll take the paper okay great here here you go nick fucking nothing man nothing what level hey matt you want this paper clip oh sure yeah actually i've been looking for something like

that what the fuck what level are you guys? 300. We pet our good boy Torgl and say, fuck, as we play You Play Final Fantasy XVI this week on Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. Oh, that's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where this week we are talking about Final Fantasy XVI,

the we play, you play of this month, year of our Lord 2023. What is it? Is it August? What are we? July? This is the end of July. Last day of July this is released. I don't know what's going on in Amsterdam, but over here in the US, it's the end of July. I think it'll still release

this episode will still release at the end of July Amsterdam time. I don't think you're that far ahead. Does it arrive? arrive yeah I'm sure I trust you guys I've seen the next I've seen the next United States presidential election so I don't know how far ahead that puts

me well that's at least well hmm let me just say I hope a certain someone's getting a second term. I won't say who. So, yes, yes, this is our We Play, You Play. For people who are new to the podcast, what this format is, is each month we spend the whole time, the whole episode, talking about one game in depth.

And sometimes it's the big new triple a release that everyone's talking about and we're all playing. And sometimes it's a, you know, game from years past that we just want to break down in granular detail. But today it's Final Fantasy 16. Yeah. This time we're playing the sixth Final Fantasy to have released in the

two thousands. Wow. Which is fucking grim. It's grim. Final Fantasy to have released in the 2000s. Wow. Is that right? Which is fucking grim. It's grim. It's not that grim. We're 23 years in.

What do you want? You want four Final Fantasies over 23 years? I want them on a FIFA schedule, babe. I want one a year. How many were released from the beginning of Final Fantasy until the year 2000 that's how many i want that number so 10 before that 10 yeah it was 10 oh you want to wait you're upset about the the not the you think it's a it's too slow of a pace you're not like so many years have passed and we can count how many years uh have gone by have have uh you know how much of our life has passed us by, by the number of Final Fantasies released.

You're making the opposite argument. Yeah. I want more Final Fantasies, potentially less big. That's fine. Maybe we can do more seven, eight, and nine sized video games, which all came out within a five year period in the 90s. Yeah, but those were big boys. I remember this taking a while to beat.

Maybe maybe I'm misremembering it because I was younger. So wait, what you're saying is that the size of the game doesn't affect. So then what? What? Why haven't they? Where are we're missing four games? Here's what I'm saying. It's the production values are what

take all the time it's like it's it's so it's just you know it's like so you okay so you i see what you mean because in in 1996 final fantasy 7 had low production values no it looked fucking these games look fucking incredible for the time but i'm saying like just like okay so because you need much bigger teams because you have to have much more detailed character models and environments and you have to have fully spoken dialogue and all that shit. Yes. Yeah, I totally am on your side here, Nick. That's why historically we know that Final Fantasy VII wasn't the most expensive video game ever made. No, it was.

game ever made no it was i'm saying but even the most expensive game ever made in 1996 okay is on a completely different scale from the median game made in 2023 i think i see what's going on here i think because heather's in amsterdam uh the zoom delay is just like a little different so like it's just like it's not that you guys are just like a second off it's that there's like a thing happening where you guys are just missing each other's points completely. I see it. Yeah, I agree. And I think they should just reuse assets from all 16 Final Fantasy games and just put a new one out next year. Who cares?

Look, the tools have gotten such. Honestly, I bet that would do really good business, dude. do really good business dude yeah the tools have gotten such that the other side of this that now you can play a game like chained echoes which came out last year and which is delightful and that feels like a you know that feels like a prestige uh 16-bit jrpg but it was made by like a one-person team so like that's the other side of it. So yeah, I don't know. You know what? It'd be cool. Not to get into Final Fantasy 16 quite yet,

but like, you know how you go to, when you save your game, you get like a, a, a, a sprite version of all of your party in the save game. Yeah.

It's just there. That, that is the kind of thing. And the same thing with, with Dragon Quest 11, where you can toggle back and forth between the in the in the um the re-release where you toggle back and forth between the 2d and the 3d presentation it just kind of like oh yeah i wouldn't mind like if they they would never do this but they're just like our

next final fantasy is just going to be like a total throwback aesthetic there was a fascinating final fantasy 15 because like the world of final fantasy 15 was expansive like there like there were movies multiple like secondary chapters that were dlc but there was also a mobile game which remade the entire game in chibi graphics. So you could play Final Fantasy 15 on your phone, hit all the story beats, and the characters would look like Funko Pops. I mean, let's not compare chibi to Funko Pops. That's unfair to chibi. These ones, you have to see these. Do they look just like Funko Pops?

I mean, it's pretty close. Okay. They're charming. It's cute. It's nice that they did that for you because you could also play that one on Switch. So that's for people that don't have the more powerful hardware. They should do that for The Last of Us. Honestly, my first thought was Death Stranding.

Like a Chibi Sam Porter Bridges, I would actually really like. I think that would be on brand for Death Stranding. Yeah, that would work. That would totally work. I would love it if there was a Last of Us for Switch in this Funko Pop Chibi style and that they pitched up the voices just a little bit.

So it'd be like, uh, Hey Ellie, any of your comic books you've been looking for? There is a, um, uh, I'm reading,

I pulled up this article here cause I've been seeing this pop up uh just like on my news feed the switch has its own dollar store last of us knockoff and it's called the last hope oh yes people wanted us to cover this for our game slop format where we talk about yeah shitty games like this sucks well i i thought i've thought about it and i was like do we want to do this do we make ourselves play the Switch Last of Us clone? I'll tell you my answer. No, I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that either.

Everything that anybody listening wants us to do, that would be bad. I don't want to do it. What we could do is, you know, Mary is such a huge fan of The Last of Us. And she has her Switch here. We could prank her and be like, hey, there's like a Last of Us. And she has her Switch here. We could prank her and be like, hey, there's like a Last of Us game that came out for the Switch. And then just let her

play it and come on the show. It would be really funny to prank someone you love so much with a really bad thing instead of having her come on to do the one thing that she's requested to do a lot, which is biker mice from Mars. Biker mice from Mars.

I have a little bit more experience having a wife, and I would advise you not to prank your wife. I know this wife thing is new to you, Heather. Don't do that. Okay. Okay. Got it. So you're saying that Final Fantasy VII

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So if you don't like it for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. Remember, start the new year off right with a delicious bowl of high-protein cereal at magicspoon.com slash getplayed and use code getplayed to save $5 off. Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. Oh, we have a lot to talk about. We have a lot. It's a big game. We have a lot of FFXVI to get into. I mean, we didn't discuss this beforehand.

Do we have any other games to talk about, or should we just dive in? I don't want to break format too much. Well, I would love to, if we don't want to break format too much well i would love to if we don't have a what are we playing right now i would love to uh share a world warrior snippet uh from the last uh week uh or so i think that would be kind of neat well well match you have anything to talk about because i have something i could talk about but also we don't you're saying like i don't want to.

If we all have something to say for what are you playing, we can do what are you playing. But if we've all been playing Final Fantasy 16, we just want to get a grip on that. This is not a what are you playing. I know, but this could slot into the what are you playing slot. What are you saying here, man? Let's do World Warrior. You've been an antagonist. Final Fantasy 7 had a small team for the time.

The only update that I have it's small it's not even like i don't even know if it's worth like let's skip it we'll talk about it we'll talk about it next week we'll talk about what are you playing i don't know why what are you playing hey what's going on i i already needed a segment intro, so here I am. No, we were just saying. What are you playing? We were just saying we're not going to do it this week because we have a big game to talk about. Yeah.

We just, you know. I was maybe going to cut that, and then now that you're here, I feel like I have to use. Now we're obligated to keep it in. I got to use you. Because we have to pay you. Yeah. Hey, there's nothing wrong with padding an episode,

especially when you have so much to talk about that's actually not makes it worse i'll just say really quick uh okay i'll just do it real quick you're right man what are you playing i'm playing final fantasy 4 uh and i'm really enjoying it so far hell yeah and where where are you at what just happened i just got the monk character the okay oh okay i'm pretty early on still um but i really like i like him i can't remember what his name is off the dome right now um but what i the things i like about it so far is that uh i didn't hate the job system in three i like having to pick jobs but i like that every character has their own thing and their name

like i don't care about naming characters so like they just have their own identities which is cool uh i think that's the first in this series to have that so far um and i like everybody's looks everybody looks really cool um and yeah everybody's individual powers are neat uh the one thing i don't like is like the charge i don't know if you've experienced if you guys have played four uh yeah i played the shit out of four uh i don't like it i don't like the charge aspect of battling like you have to like there's like a charge meter you mean the active this sort of like active time battle thing the whole the way the whole system works well not really like i this one feels a little different like like because i to me like active time battle is like or turn based i guess is what i'm thinking

but like i guess maybe this is a little different like there's like a little charge meter in between maybe it is like a slight difference i feel like at least with uh like a turn-based thing it's like okay it's your turn to attack now blah blah, blah, blah. You can go. Active time, they're attacking me while I'm like still charging up and I'm like, okay, well, like it's not even your turn yet. I can't even do anything. Yeah, so this, no, this was a design choice. I mean, this is like the whole thing. Like I actually, I like it and it's a thing that, you know,

I like it, and it's a thing that, you know, it's, I think what's, I think, like, because turns are not based purely on sequence. It's not like, okay, each one goes in the exact same order each round. It's like, it's based on, you know, attributes of those individual characters, your party members and the enemies. And so it kind of like, I don't know, it adds a little bit of, it adds a little bit of action, a little bit of tactical decision making. Yeah. You know, in terms of like how you're going to pace things out in terms of how you're going to order your attacks. But I'm sorry, you're talking about your opinion, your take on it.

I don't need to be defensive of this. No, no, no. It's okay that you like it. No, here's the thing about it is that it's new to me in the series so far so i haven't experienced it that much it's very possible that it can grow on me and that i will change my mind um because i uh so far otherwise i'm really enjoying it uh and i am excited to I've like gone full I basically have every Final Fantasy game loaded on my Switch that is playable on Switch

except for the mobile 15 because I'll play 15 on my PS5 so I have 1 through 6 on the cartridge, I have 7, 8, and 9 they've all been on sale recently so I'm going to do this wow you're going to play 12?

I'm going to play 12's Zodiac Age. Yeah, I plan to do it. I plan to play 10 and 10-2. My friend. And then I've been seeing people in the Discord. I've been seeing people in the Discord say, play 14. Because 16 and 14 have some similarities.

And maybe when I'm done with all of them, I'll finally dip my toes into 14. Because if I get into 14 now, it's over. That's been my whole issue. I just want to start playing 14. I'm not going to play anything else. You and I have dabbled in 14, haven't we? Yeah, but I never got thoroughly deep.

I never got super deep into it. I'll let you know when I do it. And if you guys want to come with me you can't hmm it's just like these things anytime i play them in mmo it takes over my life yeah it's like i kind of like need to just not do it i what else you got right now literally i don't know this podcast we can play it while we're recording every week i guess i could 11 took so much from me that sounds bad so much i don't want to do it anymore never mind uh what what about you guys well i did go longer than i i thought what well i also interrupted you uh but yeah it's it's if the active time battle is rubbing you right now, like because that's like a system that's present, I think, in all of them up through nine.

So just, you know, just be ready. I'm ready. I I'm committing to doing this. And I don't think that's that's not enough of a thing to dislike for me to completely fall off. So that's I'm fine. I'm OK. I'll talk real quick, which is just I'll touch on Diablo four. Season one started between the last record and this episode's release.

I know that we've had it started before our last episode release, but we recorded before that. It started. Here's the thing. I mean, based on my experience with it i'm and i want to be clear here i'm not complaining it's difficult to launch a game of the scale it's difficult to you know what you would you be doing season one this is like the kind of thing of like you're going to figure out what's working and what's not and you're going to iterate on it but i'm just going to wait for season two uh because there are things like so

first off you can't use your existing character to access the new content you have to start a new like seasonal character which is a little bit disorienting i understand it i i know that's that's a thing with a lot of these season-based games i want to say that was even the case with with uh with three but maybe i'm misremembering it um you know the mounts are still not super fun. I think they're going to figure they're going to maybe simplify that or something. Again, I trust these teams to figure it out. And then the big thing is just navigation. I think that's the main issue with it right now.

It's just like there's this pin system that doesn't really work. You end up kind of buried in your mini map a lot. You're tabbing in and out of it or you're just looking at the little corner of your screen that shows you where you're supposed to go because it is such a game based on like hey going to this waypoint to achieve this particular objective and so i think they're i don't know what they're gonna i don't know if they're gonna go back to like the the the old school style map overlay where it's just over basically your your play space they've been trying to avoid that or been saying it's it's technically difficult for

whatever reason but you know i i think just some adjustments some some balance tweaks some adjustments some quality of life things all need to be integrated for me to uh spend more time with this i'm glad i played through the initial, I played the campaign, effectively single player. I had a lot of fun with it. And I'm sure at some point in the future, I will return to it. But that's my experience with season one. I think that mirrors the consensus.

Heather, you have a World Warrior segment. Amsterdam! Yeah, it's time for Heather Ann Campbell World Warrior, our international segment. And this week, I've got a anecdote from a Polish listener whose name is, and I hope I say this pronunciation correctly, Jarosław, or Jarosław,oslav yaroslav that could be it um and uh they sent this uh audio clip um which is from the dendy a uh series of home video game consoles and unofficial hardware clones of Nintendo's third generation Famicom.

This was a device sold mostly in Russia and post-Soviet countries. I heard in Soviet Russia, Famicom plays you. Oh my God. That's actually really tough. Soviet Russia Famicom Plays You. Oh my God. That's actually really tough. Anyway, Matt, you want to play this? This is apparently a menu from

a 9,999 games in one system. And this was like the menu select that would allow you to choose from these 9,000 games. My favorite, there's only three comments on this video.

One of them is like, you know, holy shit. What is it? It's, bruh, I have tears in my eyes are you kidding me oh my god because i think that there were kids who played this yes and you know don't see it lionized like other uh game systems yeah but then one of the other comments is in uh in i believe russian and depending on where you translate it it's either just a buzz

childhood spent dancing or just bliss spent my childhood with tanks. Wow. Anyway, I want to read this this anecdote that he shared so you can tune this down.

First things first, the fall of communism in 1989 had a huge impact on what media I consumed as someone born in 1990. The peculiar thing of being a 90s kid in Poland was that you were actually an 80s kid at the same time due to the flood of western media from 80s and 90s caused by the aforementioned end of communism hence polish children born in the 90s were usually fans of both 80s series like teenage mutant ninja turtles or ducktales as well as 90s staples like power rangers video game console scene in the 90s where it's almost non-existent, except for one particular platform. Yes, we had Atari 2600, 7800 links, Sega Master System, and Amiga had official releases in Poland, but most were completely unavailable. So we had the so-called Pegasus, which was a clone of the Japanese Famicom. Since there was no copyright law in Poland until 1994, the company that owned Pegasus was able to sell

Famicom games without any licenses. Pegasus was extremely popular in Poland due to the fact that its counterfeits were readily available on marketplaces. Apparently, they later tried to sell Super Pegasus, Pegasus Game Boy, as well as Power Pegasus, which was a clone of the Sega Mega Drive, but without much success. I've never encountered any of them. Speaking from my personal experience, I've had one of the Pegasus fakes in 1993. The unofficial cartridges were available via our local market and cost the equivalent of $2, a quarter to trade one of the previously bought ones. One of my early childhood memories is a menu for, aforementioned 9,999 games in one cartridge as such collections that actually had a maximum of 10 games were the most common ones.

until much, much later in Poland. Sometime later, I got a classic Game Boy with Metroid 2 and a boy in his blob from an uncle who had gotten it from a friend who had imported it from the USA, but it was broken and simply impossible to get the parts in Poland, so I never got to play it. My next Nintendo console was a beautiful purple

translucent Game Boy Color from the same uncle who bought it from me during his trip to the USA. GameCube had virtually no presence in Poland. Wii and DS could be bought via online stores, but only around the release of the Wii and 3DS, of the Wii U and 3DS, did Nintendo products actually start appearing in stores due to a Czech company who became a sole Nintendo distributor in Poland.

Can you, as an aside, that's recent. Nowadays, it's more or less the same as in other countries, but the market prices seem not to be adjusted to the actual wages, and therefore it's more expensive to be a Nintendo fan here than, say, in the USA. Due to our history with the unavailability

of video game consoles, PC has been the most popular platform for gaming throughout the years, with Sony consoles quite a distance behind them. As with your experience in Amsterdam, Xbox is not doing that well, but it never actually did. So that was from, again, I think that's Yaroslav is my guess. He provided me with a pronunciation and i'll be damned if the pronunciation also makes any sense i'll be damned it's a lot of final fantasy i i hear i hear like talking like that a lot lately i'll be damned like that sort of thing um but anyway i didn't know any of this and it was so fucking cool to read it. Yeah, that's awesome.

That's great context. Like it's it's we talk. I mean, I know that when I lived here previously, it was harder to come by video games. But like Amsterdam. Yeah. Here in Amsterdam. It was harder to hear in the podcast. Listener. I am.

I'm living in your trunk. Listener. But now it's it doesn't, like as I mentioned, you can go into a store and there's stacks of PS5s here. So it's very, very different. I also pointed out to you guys earlier on text

that there is a GameCube only store here in Amsterdam, which is baffling to me. Not a good idea in the. Yes, right. Baffling to me. Like not a good idea in the early 2000s. Even now, it's bold. They sell retro refurbished systems, games, like maybe it's maybe it's a smash thing. I don't know.

But sure. But anyway, thank you so much for for messaging me here as we continue our journey into the European market with Get Played. I said that I would have a date for a Get Played Euro get together. I don't have that date yet, but I will announce it on our official Twitter, which is at get played. Uh, or. Oh, fucking hell.

It's X. We're going to, we'll put it on the shows. X. It's X now. We'll put it on X, but it'll also be, I'll repost it on my own X account.

You'll Z-it, I think is what it's called. Oh, Jesus Christ. Z-it. And it'll also be on Blue Sky Threads and Instagram. So, and our Discord, our Discord. Hey, there you go. Yeah, it'll be on the Discord. Discord, good. But it'll be happening sometime in August.

So I'm really excited to meet and hang out with you go. Yeah, it'll be on the Discord. Discord, good. But it'll be happening sometime in August. So I'm really excited to meet and hang out with you guys. I really appreciate that email you sent in, Yaroslav. I apologize if I'm butchering your name. Because the only thing I really know about the Polish gaming scene is CD Projekt Red. And their origin alone is kind of fascinating where they began as a CD-ROM distributor. Like, they start, they, and then they got in, they parlayed that success into developing software, which is kind of amazing that their whole thing was like,

you know, importing, like, Baldur's Gate for PC and, you know, pressing that to CD for that market. And then they're just like, hey, you know, we that to CD for that market. And then there's like, Hey, well, you know, we're making good money from this. Why don't we make our own games?

And they make the fucking witcher franchise. And, uh, it's, um, but yeah, all that, all that stuff is really cool.

And I'm glad that, uh, Hey, it, it fucking rocks that everyone that most of the world now has its own gaming scene and its own development scene. Yeah. We're,

we're living in a really beautiful era of video games here in the end of days. It's great. Hey, everyone. You know, you want to eat healthy. You want to eat well, but you don't want it to be a pain to prepare. Well, let me tell you, eating better is easy with Factor's delicious ready-to-eat meals. Every fresh, never-frozen meal is chef-crafted, dietician-approved, and ready to go in just two minutes. You'll have over 35 different options to choose from every week, including CalorieSmart, Protein Plus, and Keto.

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for Final Fantasy XVI. Final Fantasy XVI, we talked about Final Fantasy XIV earlier, has a lot of Final Fantasy XIV staff as part of its credits, chiefly its producer Naoki Yoshida, main director Hoshi Takai, creative director, and the writer of this game, Katsutoyo Mahiro and the localization director.

And this is a big role, I think, for our experiences. Michael Christopher Koji Fox, who has been with Square and X4 and with the Final Fantasy team for like 20 years now. Also, I should shout out the composer, Masayoshi Soken, because this is a really good score, and I think this is also something that a lot of people have had a positive reaction to from this game. I mean, I don't know. I want to not dominate this discussion

because I know based on your hours, everyone's reported, I've played this game the least of the three of us. Matt, you have finished this game. Yeah. Yeah, I got 64 hours logged on this bad boy um and it's the first modern final fantasy game that i've beaten i I have previously taken down 1 and 2, 3 on the DS,

and now 3 in the Pixel Remaster as well. And then now N16. And that's it. Those are the only Final Fantasy games that I've completed. And, I mean, I talked about this a little bit you know leading up to this record like something happened to me like i don't know i think maybe like my like my gaming muscles were

just like ready to go after tears of the kingdom i just had played a big game so maybe i was in a better place to take down such a big game like this um but i also think this final fantasy game is more designed for me and the games that i like to play in general because it's a single character story like action game it's a character action yeah yeah and that's my shit that's i love that like i don't know like it so it was just i couldn't i couldn't put it down i couldn't pull myself away from it uh i said out loud to my girlfriend i think i'm addicted to this video game and she said i yeah i know yeah no shit idiot yeah it's all you do it's all you talk about uh but i yeah i immediately was like uh do i start a uh new game plus i don't know if i'm gonna do that right now and no sooner did i say that to you guys i did start

one but i haven't picked it up since uh since last week because i know that there's just other things that i want to be doing uh and maybe i'll do a new game plus because i want to build the ultimate weapon but anyway well that's like a whole that's a whole other part of the discussion but heather what about where'd, where did you guys get to? I guess we can just... You played the least, Nick. Yeah, I'm about 15 hours in. Okay, that's not nothing.

Which is... Yeah, but it's like... It's not nothing for committing hours of your life to a task, but in terms of tackling this game, in particular Final Fantasy game, I feel like I've got a lot to go. Heather, how about you?

I am about 36 hours into the game. Wow. My PlayStation menu tells me it's 63% finished. Which tracks with your total playtime map. I don't know how we

there are so many spoilers in a game like this anything you talk about the story is going to be spoiling that story for somebody we can stay out of spoiler country yeehaw for the first part of the episode

and we can talk there's a lot to talk about in terms of systems and progression and so on. I'm going to lead off with something that's a take. I don't like this game as much as other Final Fantasy games.

And the reason being is that it's not weird. You don't think this game is that it's not weird. Hmm. You don't think this game is weird? I don't. No, I don't. Like, when I think about Final Fantasy games, for me, they are so weird.

They are so quirky and specific and kind of playful. And I think that that is all the way through Final Fantasy 15, which is about, you know, the four bros who go on a road trip and it's like, oh, this is like some kind of fever dream mishmash of american southwest and high fantasy with like crazy vistas and technology and then also cars and clothing that seem to be designed by uh lubiton and rolls royce like it is a very weird mashup and then additionally to that you have layers of the game that are like the official colbin brand is in the game and cup noodles is in the game like it is a very weird game and then the other the the mainline game that came before that final fantasy 13 uh starred a character who had a chocobo living in his afro like it's it's the they're weird worlds and this feels like a traditional fantasy if you it feels a lot to me like these um

stormlight archive books that i'm reading by Brandon Sanderson. They're like big fantasy stories that feel kind of familiar and have like that sort of political intrigue and the, you know, the long dead gods and like all that stuff that you find in a lot of

Western fantasy. So I also think that the success of the game, because it has been massively successful, like it is hugely successful, is means that all of these choices were calculated and were an attempt to make a very successful Final Fantasy game. And they succeeded.

It was... So the game director, and this is in a GameStop profile, but the game director, who I mentioned earlier, Hiroshi Takai, is a huge fan of got the god of war franchise and specifically modeled a lot of this off of god of war like that was part of the the design approach and

you can feel that yeah you definitely can so here's the thing part of the reason i played this game the least of any of us is because I was initially extremely enthusiastic about it. I love the presentation. I really like the world. I think the combat, and I still really love the combat, is an absolute hoot. It's really just super refined and well implemented. It has an incredible flow to it. As I played it more, my enthusiasm enthusiasm waned and coming into this episode i was a little worried this was going to be a two-on-one with the two of you like having a lot of enthusiasm for this game and maybe i'm one over maybe by that you know honestly that was my hope i was like maybe after this episode i'll hear both of you two raving about this game and i'll be like yeah and i'll

give it i'm gonna give it the second second chance i'll see this thing through the end but now i'm realizing it's a two-on-one with me and heather against matt so the tables have turned here's the thing so now you're with so now you're like now i feel good because i'm winning uh yeah well and here's the thing no i mean i don't know i want to hear keep keep going please i was gonna say like i don't I want to hear it. Keep going, please. I was going to say, like, I don't... Give a flying fuck what you think about this game. No.

I'm not on defense for liking it or finishing it. Because there are things in it that I don't like. For example, Heather called out that it's a pretty traditional Western fantasy story and it really is specifically because there are only white people in this game that's crazy that is so crazy um in like a game where you could put anything in it it's a you know it's like you could just not have it only be white people it's also counter to what you know i has as I was saying, it's counter to conventions that have been established in Final Fantasy canon

in the past. Like, you're playing Final Fantasy 4 right now. That's very much not the case with that canon. No, not at all. But, you know, like, again, if you're, if they're going for a super traditional, I don't want to make this argument defending it, like, they clearly had a calculation to be

like, this is going to be a super traditional high fantasy modeled off of Lord of the Rings modeled off of, uh, you know, which has an exclusively white cast, a game of Thrones, which has an almost, you know,

a mostly white, white cast. It's like, clearly they, they'd modeled it off of Western fantasy, which establishes that template. Absolutely. And,

and it's coming from a Japanese team. So like culturally, it's like a little bit, you know what I mean? Like all this shit is like, there's a, I don't so like culturally it's like a little bit you know i mean like all this shit is like there's a i don't know i think it's a little bit more complicated than uh than the optics of it but i i agree it's not great it's not idea yeah and i will say there are stretches in the game in like in like probably around where heather's at maybe like right before that where you're you're sort of just kind of going through it or at least i felt like i was just like i just have to get to the end of this by the time i had put like 40 hours in i was like i have this has to be over i have to be done with this like

not because i wasn't necessarily enjoying like the combat or like the story of it all but i was just sort of like i'm done like i i i've played enough of this where i if this was over right now i would be fine um because i think the story has the story has um waves to it where some of the story i'm pretty interested in and why i want to know what's going on and then the rest of it i'm sort of like well i know this or like i'm i you know more of this this is what we're still doing like we're still on this part of it we I'm sort of like, well, I know this. Or like, I'm, you know, more of this. This is what we're still doing. Like, we're still on this part of it. We're in this part for a while. The end, I will say, I think is worth getting to.

Like, it's like... Okay. All right. That's an endorsement. The end is great. And I think the final big set piece, the final, like, is one of the most fun parts of the game i like i was there's like one uh like icon fight that i think is better than everything in the game but uh i think the end is is worth it and i think the end is good. Well, I'm not going to quit the game.

Okay. Like, I... I might quit the game, but keep going. Final Fantasy games have been so much a part of my, like, conscious pop culture experience. Yeah. That I feel like I owe it to the game to finish it. And it is really bittersweet because it takes so fucking long for these games to come out. And, you know, as I've said on the show before, I fucking platinum to 15.

Yes. Like I loved 15. Yes. Like I loved 15. And I know that it was not a hugely like even in Final Fantasy fans, like in your backpack of games, a lot of people aren't going to put 15 in that backpack. But I was like, fuck this. I mean, this totally has its hooks in me. And there's nothing in 16 which is sinking its teeth into me. It's not weird enough. The relationships aren't, like, dynamic enough. Like, the four boys in 15, you love those boys. Like, you love the way they relate to each other. Like, you love the way that they to each other like you love the way that they

physically interact with each other on the battlefield like there's a lot of like there's a lot of like when prompto does something and he falls down doing it and another character comes over and like helps him up and then they high five and then they get back into the fight and that's all like animation that is dynamic and isn't scripted like there's such an aggressive animation engine in the uh in the fighting in 15 between the guys and in this, I'll have party members and they might as well not even be in the party. Like Clive is just wrecking fucking house and everything on the screen is like lightning and fire effects. Or, you know, fucking smoke. I don't want to.

I don't want to. I don't want to spoil something. Don't spoil anything. Well, staying out of spoiler country. Just don't spoil anything. Is a power a spoiler? Yes. Is an icon attack a spoiler? Yes.

I just feel like I really got to say it. No, you can't say it first off I don't even know what you're saying so with 36 hours into the game our listeners may not know what you're saying I'm sure a lot of our listeners have finished this but some but also we have listeners who like

don't even play the game so like we were covering every demographic will be covered by people who listen to pod can i cryptically say this yes if you know me and you know the stuff that i like okay you know that there's one that i love and that's all i'll say okay so at some point you get a power or bulbous or rise of skateboard uh here here i want to i want to be like not a fuddy duddy here because i i think people may be like like like hey weiger you're fucking old fuddy duddy uh yeah you're a fuddy duddy you old ass fuddy duddy you're saying shit like that uh into your car stereo right now you fuddy duddy i'd love to go to Fuddruckers.

I wish there was one standing. I wish I would go there today. The stuff I love about this game and the reason I was like this fucking rocks through my first like six hours of play time is the new stuff. The stuff I really have a lot of enthusiasm for are the things that they added to

Final Fantasy 16. The stuff that disrupts a lot of what they've established in the previous games. I think the combat system is so fun. I think it's just like the flow state you get into it. It sucks.

It sucks? Okay, you're saying it sucks. I do want to get to this. But I think it's so fun. flow state you get into it sucks it sucks okay you're gonna say you're saying it sucks i i will i do want to get to this uh but i think it's so fun i think getting into you i think you immediately get into the flow state once i switched it to where i was using the shoulder buttons uh you know from soft style for the combat i just had uh i just had an absolute blast with it i do really like the staggering system for both mini bosses and bosses. I think that's like great. And I think it's really satisfying when you stagger an enemy and you just get to fucking wallop on them for a while. The only issue I have with it is, well, I have a few issues with it.

One, I wish that it feels like for a game that is so leaning into, you know, elemental attacks that the element should have some effect other than just dealing raw damage agreed that's really strange that it's just purely an aesthetic difference the other thing is just and this is partly why i kind of got i fell off of it this may be the main reason why i fell off of it beyond the story uh feeling kind of generic which was touched on is that it's just so easy it's just such a brain dead difficulty level that i just never really felt like i was having any sort of challenge with anything and that bummed me out okay but the but the actual system is a blast okay i will amend my statement because that is my complaint with the combat system is i have no idea if it's a good combat system because i've never used a fucking potion

like i'm 36 hours into this fucking game and my potions are capped like you can only carry four or six or whatever the fuck it is and whenever you collect one on the battlefield, if you've even taken a hit, it will heal you up so that that one hit is gone. I just interject on that real quick because I do actually like that system. Since you have a cap on the number of potions you can carry, when you come across an extra potion in the wild, it automatically uses it when you pick it up. I think that's a great implementation. Love it. But there is, I think, something broken in a game where there's like, I use, like, I'm, and I know, oh, Heather is so good at games. Oh, she's such a.

Oh, Heather's so cool. Oh, she's like the best. Heather's awesome. She's not a funny heather's so cool oh she's like the best one she's awesome fucking hard but the but balancing potion use yeah is part of the final fantasy experience it's you know risk and reward and sometimes risk and failure and taking those risks and pulling off something in older final fantasy games or like skin of your teeth beating a boss with no potions left and you're like out of spells or you're out of magic. Like that was part of, for me, the difficulty curve of Final Fantasy games was there was something that could happen. games was there was something that could happen whereas i don't like there's it's so like as soon as there are s level marks on the fucking uh monster board i'm hunting those marks

and i'm doing it when i have no party members because i'm like, at least this is interesting, sort of. But Mary was watching the game and she's like, what are you doing? Like, you're just hitting this guy forever and he's not dying. And I was like, yeah, this is the monster system. And she's like, is he hurting you? And I was like, nope. It feels like the evasion window is pretty generous and even the invasion the window for a what was it called the prestige evasion what do you call it when you get a precision dodge or yeah precision dodge yeah when you get a precision dodge which feels super satisfying get a precision

dodge follow precision counter but it's so cool it looks fucking terrific it looks awesome it feels great it's really satisfying. It would be more satisfying if you felt like, oh, hey, I achieved something here. Not that I'm just like, hey, the window's wide enough where it's just easy for me to string these together. And the same sort of thing with the counter system, which I feel like I do more counters by accident because I'm just doing a flurry of attacks. Like, oh, okay, I did a counter there. Okay, there we go. because I'm just doing a flurry of attacks like,

oh, okay, I did a counter there. Okay, there we go. The greatest feeling in video games is, I think, a parry in Street Fighter III, a parry in Dark Souls slash Elden Ring. And those moments are such immense risk in order to achieve the effect. Like, you are literally letting down your guard and perhaps taking full damage,

or you are negating all of the damage and you are, and you're achieving the thing. And this just feels weightless. It bumps me out. Can I offer a counter and then Lodge's different complaint? Precision counter! I'm a different complaint? Ugh, precision counter! Matt, I'm here to hear your defense of this game, because I know you love this game.

I want to love this game. Me too. There's nothing more I'd like more than to play the new Final Fantasy and be like, this is my shit. You guys are complaining, or not complaining, critiquing. Yes. The difficulty of this game. One of my favorite things about this game

is that it's easy. If this game was hard and it was this, if this game was hard and it was presented as it is right now, I probably wouldn't like it so much. There's a good chance that if it was harder, I wouldn't have finished it, right? Because, I don't know uh there were a couple times that i died and was like mad and i was like okay like that sucks and then i would just do it like two more times and be like oh

like i just needed to remember to to dodge or whatever like that's like that's it like it's you can basically win any encounter uh if you're just remembering to do the things that you're supposed to be doing i was worried several times while playing that i was gonna break my uh square button because i was just smashing that thing like crazy right uh yeah but and so that's maybe a critique that i have of it as well as that i don't think uh as far as attacks go that there's enough variance in the buttons like uh that you you could be pushing because like i'm gonna tell you right now if i'm not using one of the icon bowers i'm not pressing triangle i don't i'm not trying to throw a fireball at anybody i'm not doing that like that's just not how i'm playing the game at all uh that's a waste of a button push to me

man we we play differently yeah i like their own things i'm getting in there and i'm destroying my goal in any encounter is to kill the enemy without breaking the combo so okay my my my chain of combat is the uh four slashes to knock them down while charging my magic with my second finger because as i've said i hold the controller like a claw for this game uh then releasing the charged magic which is a launcher so they'll fly up in the air then doing the strike magic strike magic strike magic uh combo then the downward slash which brings them back down to the get the ground so that i can charge the magic and launch them again and i just try and with each enemy if if they can be knocked down then it's yeah even then though it's like well i feel like i'm typing the same word over and over again welcome welcome welcome my battle strategy was this start an encounter oh this is not if it's like just like on the field encounters if

it's boss or a hunting sort of situation chugging a lionheart potion a lionheart potion or whatever that's called what's that that's the one that increases your um your like special meter okay or like it makes it so that for a period of time it grows or it fills faster uh than normal uh so i'm chugging that doing the stone skin one for defense and then the camera what the one's called for attack like that makes you stronger strength tonic strength tonic yeahic. Yeah, I think that's it. Then, with a full special meter, R3L3, baby. Locking that in. Getting that out there.

Bursting. Going nuts. Sure. Then, I had a good icon build. I had specific ones, especially late game, that I really liked and that cooled down differently. So by the time one was done, by the time I got through all of them, it would sort of like... Okay, that is fun.

When you start getting other icons and you can toggle between them and monitor their cooldowns, and just like that sort of spinning plates is a lot of fun. And again, speaks to my enthusiasm for the combat as i and i and late game there's some great ones there's some really great ones that are that are awesome is there's they're so fucking cool i'm cycling through those and then when i'm done when those are like cooling down i'm just fucking breaking that square button talk just like just like just smashing that thing dude and uh and then just winning and and then and then going on and doing something else uh one of my complaints

that i teased you get this you every after every sort of like main encounter you're back at the hideaway right and the hideaway is like your sort of hub before you can go back out into the the main world and yes and do side quests or main quests or whatever you want you have the blacksmith and you have fuck what's the blacksmith's name you have chair on the blackthorn the blacksmith of course and chair on is like the items person uh or care on i think uh and you can always buy new items or craft new items with the uh um blacksmith and then uh you can um like increase their effectiveness with the blacksmith as well uh i can't remember what that's that's called at the moment um they have almost no it doesn't matter it almost doesn't matter because you can just buy the next

one and then you're just a little stronger for a little bit of time until you can get the next one and then it's like who cares this this is okay this is basically my biggest complaint with the game is that these things that are so, so fun and RPGs and have been very fun in past final fantasies, you know, not that crafting is necessarily a big element, but you know, there's an element in other RPGs resource collection and crafting and then an

upgrading equipment or just getting new equipment. Like that is so such a big part of progression in one of these games beyond just your levels going up which also i feel like your levels going up don't really feel they feel really incremental doesn't feel like it uh affects things much because it's all anchored in one main town hub uh and because you just sort of like reach the next the next node in the story uh and and it's just like, there's new equipment available. Hey, there's new upgrades available. It all feels arbitrary and abstract.

And I think part of the fun of adventuring is like, oh, wow, I'm in a new world. I'm in a new town. I'm in a new biome. And look, they have new gear here. And this new gear does different stuff. Or like, oh, wow, I found this new resource. What does this resource do? And all that stuff to me just feels completely, you know generic and doesn't feel like it has

it feels like you're just going through the motions in terms of uh in terms of of upgrading your character there's also in those games frequently trade-offs like it'll be like, well, this sword has a higher magic attack, but a much lower standard strike. And so it's like, well, what is my play style? And none of that is present here. I am 36 hours into this fucking game and I have never bought anything. anything like i've i've like i have i have hundreds of thousands of gill and i go to the fucking stores and i'm like the only thing that i can buy is the music for the jukebox because there's no gear there's like i also feel like i run in video games where you can spend money i run poor like anybody who's played fortnight with me knows that

i never have money because if there is a something to spend the money on in the game i will exhaust my coffers in order to get the latest equipment or re-roll the thing or whatever and with this it's like by the time i go to the fucking blacksmith, like whatever the fancy sword is, I've already hunted everything on the board because that's the first thing I do when I go into town is I hunt monsters. Because I'm like, at least there's like at least the big marks are a little bit more interesting with their spell casting or something. Like there's a there's a fucking eyeball monster that can kill you in one hit and i was like oh this i know this spell i know to avoid whatever this this thing is and i know it's going like this is this is something worth having a little bit of a fight with but like i should i shouldn't be i mean yeah he's a prince or whatever but like i shouldn't be

fucking rich as shit like it should always be like am i gonna get a high potion or am i going to get an elixir like that feeling a fun thing you can do with that gill at the bar at the hideaway you can buy a round for everybody and it costs 10 000 gil and everybody really likes that that's a that's like kind of fun uh but you mentioned the the hunt board and i simply must mention that the the proprietor of the hunt board is the sole Moogle of the game, and his name is Nectar, and I love him. Yeah, he's great. That's great.

He's great, and he almost wasn't in the game, apparently. Shut up, Nectar. Yeah, I saw that, too. Too weird. Too weird in this Final Fantasy game to have a Moogle in here. What's going on? So the Chocobo theme only plays for two bars and then drops out and you because the chocobo theme's too weird like it's there's fuck this is final fantasy

the spirits within the game it's not nick they ran away from final fantasy they made the spirits within the game it's not that it's Considering that one of the monsters uses a power called spirits within. Okay, yeah, that's true. I want to go back to something Heather said a second ago, because I think it was a really great point, and it's a really great insight, and there's an example in the recent past, in current gaming generation,

of Square Enix doing the exact opposite, which is having trade-offs for equipment. And that's Final Fantasy VII Remake, a game I adore, a game I think is so fun, a game that I also think just has a great combat system that has, you know, not the most difficult game I've ever played, but a little bit more challenge to it, and a little bit more tactical considerations you have to do. And also that includes your loadout of your equipment for your characters so cloud for instance has starts off

with a buster sword the buster sword has like you know a couple of materials uh slots and then just like sort of like a very it's a very balanced weapon in terms of attack and magic attack as you progress you get game you get uh you, weapons that have like more material slots, which allows you to have more abilities in them and maybe a higher magic attack. But like a lower, you know, a regular attack for then your buster sword or you get a weapon like the nail bat, which is just like a super powerful weapon with no material slots. So if you want to go like, you know, I'm just going to go full on bruiser. I'm just going to go guy who's going to going to fuck shit-on bruiser i'm just gonna go guy who's gonna gonna fuck shit up that's the direction i'm gonna go you get you can do that and and like it actually feels like even though you've got like a clearly defined player character cloud in the same way that that you know clive is in this game a character who has his own

like established narrative you're not really like role playing this character all that much you're not making that many decisions for them still you get to choose how you want to build them and i like i think that's super fun i ended up just running the buster sword the whole game partly because it was like you know what it's fucking cloud and that that feels appropriate but i know that there are all sorts of ways to to play it and i kind of wish there was more of it i mean i do wish there was more of that in Final Fantasy 16 instead of just like okay now I have the bastard sword plus one I don't know what the fuck sure yeah I don't know

I honestly don't know what the fuck equipment I have most of the time I like when games let you change aesthetics right like I kind of got that's part of it too I kind of got sick of seeing Clive's clothes I wanted to see different clothes I wanted to just like wear different armor I kind of got sick of seeing Clive's clothes. I wanted to see different clothes.

I wanted to just wear different armor. Yeah, that'd be fun. That's not going to change the game that much. Maybe a stat, a trade-off of some kind, right? That's fine. Maybe he's a little sturdier, but more resistant or less resistant to certain types of attacks or whatever. I think also because the elemental attacks don't have, Sturdier, but more resistant or less resistant to certain types of attacks or whatever. Like that could have been.

Well, I think I think also because the elemental attacks don't have, you know, again, it's all just raw damage that that also removes some of the ability to, you know, give you some tradeoffs. You can change the look of Link, which, you know, 20 years ago, if you'd been like, yeah, you can put Link in different clothes, it would be like, what? It's Link. You don't put Mario in different clothes. But then that started to happen also. Like, it's weird that in a time of Elden Ring, in a time of, like, even Legend of Zelda letting you dress your character in different things that Final Fantasy is so. And I know that we're complaining in both directions here, but it's it is weird that the only aesthetic change on Clive is the fucking sword. And often that change is not crazy enough like the swords in these games are iconically bizarre like water

sword or like a sword that's like made out of a pretzel like you like crazy fucking weaponry don't give me that and none of none of that is here like all the swords are kind of just there's like a purple kind of gruff looking one and a red sort of slicey looking one but like generally speaking they're kind of all basically the same and on a wheel the big cactuar or something yeah um i shared with you guys uh in the chat the lineage of final fantasy development teams. And I think that's really interesting. Um, after final fantasy six, the development team sort of split in half and you had one half go off to final fantasy tactics and one half go off to final fantasy seven.

The lineage on the seven team is seven, eight, 10, 13 and seven remake. And then there is a small branch off that is Kingdom Hearts, Type 0, and Final Fantasy 15, right? On the other side is Tactics, 9 and Vagrant Story, 12, Final Fantasy 14 online, and then Final Fantasy 16. And you can feel the difference between this team and the other team in this game.

Like this game feels a lot more like Tactics and but also it's like 7, 8, 10, 13, and 7 Remake all kind of feel like the same story being told across games. Like some kind of aesthetic, some vocabulary, like the things that are important to that team. A little bit more science fiction and cyberpunk-y. Yeah, yeah. The things that are important to that team remain the flavor of Final Fantasy that I'm familiar with. team remain the flavor of Final Fantasy that I'm familiar with, whereas Tactics 9, 12,

and 16 are a little bit different. And the truth is, 12 is like fucking weird. Yeah, 12 is great. 12 is fantastic. You still get these pontificating white dudes in armor who are like, well, the role of Damascus shall not be bent. Like you get all that shit in 12, but also they're all wearing what looks to be clocks. Like every piece of clothing in 12 is like a clock. Whereas 16, it's like, yeah, okay. That's a, Like, whereas 16, it's like, yeah, okay, that's a. And that, man, I really wanted to love this so much.

Me too. The towns are ugly. And they're not specific enough to be Assassin's Creed medieval towns where you're like, oh, I guess that's the kind of well they used to use. And they aren't fantasy enough to be like, oh, cool, that building is on top of a crystal. Like there are some iconic visual towns in Final Fantasy 16, but all of your general towns are the same sort of medieval town or the same sort of desert town over and over again. And they don't stand out quite enough to where you're going to some of these places

a couple of times, and every time I go back, I'm like, wait, where is this? Oh, okay, it's over there. I have to reorient myself. It's like yeah they're easy to like remember the layouts um something that i've i've read about and experienced a little bit was in the new game plus you can um after you beat the game one time you can get a new harder mode called final fantasy mode and i think that's so crazy that it's locked behind having to finish the game

to play it with a harder difficulty because i started it i started my new game plus in final fantasy mode and i will say it's harder, but I don't know if it's more fun because your first encounters that you're having are with level 40, like level 43, wherever you end up, whatever carries over for you. They're at your level, and they should be easy to take down

because they're the first guys you encounter, but you're just hitting them for so long, and they're not your level and they should be easy to take down because they're the first guys you encounter but you're just hitting them for so long and they're not really hitting you back because they're like they're they're the first encounters you know yeah that's that's that's another issue i think with the combat is that just like some of the the quote-unquote challenge just comes from the duration of these battles which is just like there's not there's nothing mechanically all that complicated about this particular boss fight. All of their tells are really obvious. But I just have to fight them for like 12 straight minutes. And so basically the main thing I'm battling is just fatigue.

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, people are getting mad at us. They're not going to be mad. This game is critically and commercially beloved i know i know people i just i'm we want to like this game we're rooting for this game i just it's just didn't quite connect with with me um i also think that the just speaking of the combat the thing that you know happens with some of these boss battles is the cinematic strikes and evasions which to me are just another thing of like it feels kind of retrograde it feels like i know this is an element that happens we still have context uh you know sensitive uh these sorts of events that happen but i i to me this feels like

if you're playing a ps2 game you know and you're like what are games gonna look like what what are games going to be like in 20 years you'd be like well like this but prettier you know if you didn't have an imagination you just be like i don't know this will they'll be the same sort of thing you'll press a button a time you have a timed button press and a glorified cinematic um and uh during a boss battle that that sort of thing will happen and i i just felt like none of that was was was all that satisfying and and it felt like style over substance which is like maybe a general critique i have for this game can we are we haven't talked about the story really at all is there anything we can say about the story like in the like just the early part of it like i know i've seen all of it so i know how it shakes

out but like the very basic story is yeah you're this like prince who is assigned to protect this your younger brother which is like weird because like you would do that anyway like you like you wouldn't just be like i'm gonna let my little brother die like you know you're just gonna protect him your brother has these powers of a phoenix uh and then there's like an incident where you believe him to have passed away and you believe it that it was somebody uh's fault um but because he has his powers of the phoenix you as the player and observer of the story know that there's no way he's dead because he has phoenix powers uh yes and then later on you learn that it was actually your fault kind of we should i feel like we should get we should just get into

spoiler country because you're kind of recapping a lot of it so okay well you know it's the beginning you know hold on to your hold on to your hats and glasses uh saddle up that all happens in like the first like hour i yeah I know, but yeah, I just see the road you're going down and you're on that pack mule and you're descending into the canyon. Notice spoiler. Alright, giddy up motherfuckers. Let's go.

Yeehaw. And so then, I don't know, like there's a time jump, right? Like you start the game as you're older. I like the time jump. I think the time jump's a time jump right like there's like you start the game as you're older you could i like the time jump i think the time jump is cool i think it's i think it's time jump sucks no i think it's cool here's something i'll say about the time jump wait which okay we're in spoiler country so yeah there are there's more than one time jump there's multiple time jumps

i think it's cool because a lot of a nowadays, these video game characters, they're modeled after somebody, right? Or they're like sort of loosely modeled after a person. Not all of them are. All like human characters are created, are like brand new designs, right? Or at least they're like motion captured a little bit. These guys, they were like, hey, we're going to make a new guy and we're going to make him young. We're going to make him a little older

and then we're going to make him just like a little bit older than that too. Like you don't ever really get to see a video game character age in a specific way, which I think is cool. I will say that it's fucking ridiculous in that little bit older seat. Like, there's a five. It's negligible. There's like an 18-year time jump or something. And then there's like a five-year time jump.

And the five-year time jump happens after you've been playing with Clive for a while. So you've been leveling him up. But then five years goes by and the dude doesn't level at all and he doesn't get any new equipment like in five fucking years that dude hasn't fought one monster I get what you're saying yeah

that's just like a video game thing I don't know how you resolve that I think they could have just made him five levels higher it wouldn't have mattered like they're fake like just give him five levels higher. It wouldn't have mattered. Like, they're fake. Sure. Like, just give him five, like, you'd be like, oh, wow, you know, like, make him 30 levels higher. Who gives a shit? Yeah.

You know, obviously you meet some characters along the way that are gonna help you in your journey, the best of which is Sid. I love Sid. I thought you were gonna say Torgl. Well, Torgl, Torgl fucking rocks. He's not helpful at all. Sid is Sid. I love Sid. I thought you were going to say Torgl. Well, Torgl fucking rocks. He's not helpful at all.

Torgl's great. No, but he's cool. Torgl fucking blows. He's not good. His healing ability is worse than Donald's. It's real bad. He doesn't do anything. He'll attack.

Torgl, to me, my boy. boy yeah you can make him attack and stuff but like otherwise he's not really doing anything um but also the attacks with the dog don't juggle or anything like if because i keep my my my battle menu basically on Torgl. There's no reason to be on the fucking potion menu. So I'm doing sick and ravage and sick and ravage, and nothing is fucking happening. You keep hoping that that, yes. And I forget, sick I think is just the attack, and ravage is the one that sort of pops them in the air, right?

And it's like, you keep, I keep hoping like, okay, this will start some sort of combo sequence that this is. And maybe there is a way to do it that I just didn't quite, you know, maybe,

maybe, but it, it, it isn't quite as effective as you want it. No. Um, but the main, the main focus of the story is you're trying to figure out what the hell's

going on with your brother uh and then once you find that out the main thing that you're doing is you're destroying the mother crystals and along the way you fight these um dominance of certain icons uh and then that's how you get more powers you have you have the you have ifrit uh if it's powers and then you know you meet all the ones from final fantasy along the way you're you're you're uh uh well that's all i'll say garuda i think is the second garuda titan you know gives you the arrow powers and from there you get more powers and you can do like mix and matching in there and then then you're off to the races and that's that's

sort of what the story is and then you know more stuff happens later that i won't spoil because that's deeper than where you guys are i think that there are some cool story things first off i want to shout out that i don't remember there ever being gay characters in a Final Fantasy game before. And there are gay characters that are story important. And there are gay characters like on the street. Yeah. Like you'll pass by dudes who are just like, will I see you tonight? I'm gay.

You're gay too. Which I like. That's nice. It's's nice it's not the whole fucking world you know like it's not like everybody is gay but it's nice to have like a little bit of inclusion and apparently that was such a problem that the game is not being

released in Saudi Arabia which yeah good on them there's an element in the story that i like and we're in spoiler country and i don't know if nick's gotten to this uh so it'll be a spoiler for nick too do i don't care you don't care i like that he's not gonna do it these the people who have magic powers are treated like shit by the world. Yes. Like they are enslaved effectively. And then also that those magic powers kill the user.

Like over time, it just kills you. And I was like, that's neat. That's a cool fantasy idea. I mean, it's not like good. No. But it's not cool, like good. No, but it's, it's cool.

Um, yeah. Anyone with any sort of extraordinary ability or uniqueness is, is tends to be marginalized. Yeah. So that would, that makes sense. Yeah. I like,

I like that because generally in these games, if you have magic, it's like, Oh, you're a wizard. Congratulations. Like, it's like, everybody's happy for you. And then this, it's like, oh, you're a wizard. Congratulations. Like, it's like, everybody's happy for you.

And in this, it's like, oh my God, my son was born with magic powers. Put him in the trash. Like, that's kind of neat. Yeah, it being a curse. That is cool. What's not neat is that

every quest that you have ends with the exact same gesture by Clive. He hands something to somebody or receives something. And then that person walks off camera because you have to justify why they're not standing in the same place on the map. That's not great. I guess that's not a story point. That's just that's just a grumpiness. I'm just what we're

talking what we're talking story story and this is another thing that is new to the game and the other thing that i love beyond the combat is active time love it i've talked about it before active time lore is great look it's you know video games i i've heard some issues some complaints about like hey it disrupts the pacing and and the cinematic nature of the cut scenes i get that but also we video games are experienced differently than you know the than than other medium then and and i think like like the the ability to to pause any cut scene at any time or and also like basically any at any point in the world and just sort of see who the fuck are these people especially for me when i was dealing with like, hey, I had to take a few days away for, you know, because I had some picket line duty

or because I was traveling or something like that and come back to the game like, what the fuck is going on? Who the fuck are these people? What is this land called? Just having that at the ready, I think is so great. And I hope more games emulate this. Pentament had a similar system,

very different kind of game, but just like you could kind of basically hyperlinks for every keyword and you could get context for everything at any point i think it's awesome and i think it really helps uh the world building in the store i would love i mean like i love any essentially a compendium an index there are characters in the game that you can go talk to and basically look up anything that has ever happened in the world there's like maps that you can examine of both character relationships and also the way the countries have interacted with one another all that shit i love like give me more of that that's great it's delicious the side quests in this game

either The side quests in this game either suck or are fine. None of them, none of the ones that I've done, and I did quite a few of them. Uh-huh. I think by the time I was done with the game i had like 10 left on my map at least so that could have been maybe you know that could be more

depending on the progression of those a lot of a lot of the early ones are hey i need wood yes right for the guy hey thanks just go get this resource i need can you help deliver these plates to the people. Yeah, sure. Oh, this person needs this. Keep take it to them in this town. Great. Oh, I don't mind that because that's almost like tutorial, you know, stuff.

It's like fine. Like I'm getting I maybe if you've never, never played one of these games before. Now, you know how a side quest. Well, later on. It's like, hey, somebody has something i need over there can you go get it yeah go get it okay here's the thing that that guy needs you can take it back to him great i'm gonna go take this back to that guy give it to him side quest is done uh like they don't get much more difficult as like the game goes on there's like some that have um more

beats than others like there's a um one series of side quest blacksmith blues where blackthorn gets sad at the things he's making or like it's like yeah you have to go get him something to cheer him up and he's like oh cool i have this now now i can make the thing a lot of it but it's like or sometimes you have to fight there's like oh there's these there's an infestation of uh those like floating bomb head things uh go take those out for me and then you know i can give you this or whatever uh and so it's like it's a lot of stuff like that there's not like uh like there was one that was actually pretty sad. That's kind of early on where you learn about, you're learning about how people with magic powers are being treated.

Uh, and, uh, this one little girl is like playing with, is like, is missing her, uh, her, like her dominant or whatever, or her branded. They're all called branded. If you have magic, you have a brand of some kind on you. The quest you're referring to is the only good side quest.

Yes. And you are looking for this girl's branded. You don't know where she is. You find her dead behind the side of a house you're looking for her pet yeah so then she treats her like a pet yeah so so you're going around like looking for a dog yeah and then you learn that it's her branded that you're actually looking for and you find and she's like oh no i didn't know that was going to happen. And then she like learned that. She's inches away from kicking the corpse.

Yes. It's a great, that's a great side quest. That's a good one. But then the rest of them, I'm just sort of like, I just kind of did them and was like, I don't even really care what they're saying. Right. I just like know that it's going to point me to where I need to go. And I can go do that and come back and and and do it.

I really like. So here's something I like. I like the lore stuff in this game, as I've said, like I like all the dictionaries and tomes and like all that stuff. I also like a lot of the item description and like menus on the wall at taverns that you can like read. Yeah. That being said, the game hates chocobos and none of the other Final Fantasy games have hated chocobos. And it is pervasive throughout all of the descriptions of stuff on like on the walls or in your inventory i've got a few screenshots here like bloody hide is a very typical crafting material that you receive from killing monsters who the fuck knows what you use it for because i've never had to make anything um like every time i go to make something in the blacksmith it's like you need like six of these

and i have like 99 out of 99 in my inventory and i'm like all right um bloody hide when properly treated with urine lime salt and a lengthy soak in chocobo brains this icarflect skin will make for a fine piece of leather indeed it's like chocobo brains okay uh well um then there's there's like a menu ah here it is um one of the menus has drink uh uh gaultland 870 brandy wine imperial Gold meat, pandamane, stone blue, black pudding, smoked kippers, salt loach, roast hair, and then also chocobo stew. So these motherfuckers are eating these fucking birds. Like they're eating them and killing them, bashing open their skulls to like tan leather

uh there's a uh description at one of the restaurants to marinate chocobo prepare hen by draining blood and removing both head and feet stir into a deep bowl of watered wine preferably of the red variety honey salt pepper nut, pepper, nutmeg, and any other seasonal savory herbs, if you so desire. Add to the bowl the dressed bird and let it lay in a dark room for a single turn of the sun. Break the breastbone

and ready your force meat thusly. Chop together the heart and liver of the chocobo and mix it with the crumb of a stale barm and cupo nuts soaked in boiled cream. Like they hate fucking chocobo. Yeah, and I don't I don't know if this is in other ones, but they're like in the battle area

and you can fight and kill them. Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's a departure from how chocobos have been handled. I think there's, you know, like a layer to like, look, this world is just that bleak and fucked up that this is what happens. But I think it typifies what is the one issue for this game for longtime fans, which is it's kind of running away from what we like about it. It's trying to be more Game of Thrones and less anime,

and we liked it being anime. I think there would... So I think if it had gone full Game of Thrones, though, I would have been completely on board. If this had been Final Fantasy colon Elden Ring, I'd have been like, fuck yes, this is my favorite game of all time. You've got your sexy dude with his long hair,

and every encounter is terrifying and then also everybody is dying constantly i'd be like fuck i'm on board i'm on board let's see some fucking okay this is gonna be my fucking biggest complaint if you're gonna imply nudity if you're gonna like do that fucking austin power shit don't do that yeah i want to see oh yeah i want i want to i want to see it all we've got we've got violence we've got like fuck and like you know cock said in this game like we're still getting cussing they say fuck all the time my favorite fucks in the game are when you are ifrit and you say fuck like when you're a fucking kaiju and you say fuck it rules it is so funny because not just fuck it's like fuck yeah it's kind of like the okay well well i think this this also kind of speaks to how calculated it is for not just a western but particularly an american or north american audience which is like

knowing that like americans are very squeamish about sex and nudity in particular when it comes to their their children being exposed to it so like hey I'll let my teenager play this game with fucking gore and cussing but there better not be any breasts in it you know but I don't know they could give us one

they should yeah they think they should have gone all the way do we want to talk about some of the the music yeah uh the music yeah love the music i like the music don't love it don't hate it i like it i've got a couple of tracks here that um are my my picks for final fantasy. They mostly sound like town themes, though I do have some

field music here. Why don't you play just any of them, Matt? Here we go. This one's Idols of the Empire. That's a good one. Like, you can have this on in the background for a long time.

And you do. It's one of the songs you hear a lot. Yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. But it's a good feeling. How about another one, Matt? Sure. Let's play another Final Fantasy XVI track. Here's Martha's Rest, The Founder's Footsteps.

Oh, okay. Well, kind of similar. It's kind of the same, yeah. Oh. Oh, okay, wait. But I like it. I like it, but this is why I only like this soundtrack.

Yeah. Because I feel like the town themes in Final Fantasy games have been pretty disparate. Like Fisherman's Horizon doesn't sound like Balamb Garden. And these... Two all-timers. Yeah. And they're both in the same game. I do like this overworld

theme though from running around and killing some monsters. Yeah. Three Reeds Forevermore. Yeah. Like, this is a really good track to play while you're hearing footsteps, which is a lot of what the, like, running around is. Yeah. Just, like, footsteps. And great orchestration talking about running around too when you do the side quest where you can get the chocobo

and you can then use the chocobo in the overworld and uh and you know sort of effectively fast travel like you know throughout the map it's too clunky to get on and off the chocobo i think you should be able to jump off the chocobo you can jump onto it what's that it's it's the diablo 4 mountain problem it's uh you know it's like there's there's a weird it's it's just dismounting and mounting like that should be i i don't know look oh this is the thing i'm just i i think that after i post elden ring i just want every mount to work yes that yeah absolutely which is unfair to other games but it's just like they they just they sort of solved it i feel like i have to play just the victory fanfare because i feel like it's in this game it's really good and i don't for some reason i feel like you don't hear it enough like you hear it sometimes but i'm like this should happen every time

That's good shit. That rules. Yeah, it's really fucking good. And, you know, how are they going to surprise us with each one? You know, what's the new version of it? And this is a great take. Really, really good. We should wrap this up because we're running tight on time and everyone's going to be mad at us.

Nobody has listened to the second half of this episode, but we should get a, we should get some of your thoughts. It's time for the, you play of our, we play, you play your view crew, the re you crew. All right, here we go this word these are all from our discord discord.gg slash get played

pod is that what it is um here we go this one's from not rock what's up not rock what's up not rock uh hi not rock is this game perfect no is this a game where i said holy shit out loud to myself more than i can ever remember doing yes wow all right i think that's fair does have some holy shit moments yeah we didn't really talk about the like the icon battles they're all like basically huge kaiju fights you versus the other uh icon and it rocks it's it's all that stuff rules um they they they look really cool i wish it felt like there were any stakes but it like just in terms of the uh absence of of any sort of difficulty to them but i but they do it doesn't feel like you could fail those encounters at all like it's like okay well this is the

sequence where i get this um this next one's from mirror b play the demo and my wife thought torgle was so cute that she bought me the game 10 out of 10 adorable little puppies wow oh that's nice that is cute it's a cute story and boldasaur writes year of the tor Turgle. I'm telling you guys. Turgle from Jedi Survivor? Torgle from Final Fantasy 16? Lots of Turg. It's just interesting.

That's all I'll say about it. It's just interesting. Give me one more. What's next, Turgle? I guess I'm throwing away my script. There goes Targol. This next one is from Rebel of the Neon God. Whoa.

Fuck. Holy shit. Hold on. I got a Bing Rebel of the Neon God. Is that anything or is that a... Oh, okay. That's a 1992 film. The Taiwanese film that came out in 1992 I gotta fucking watch this

title alone that is good they write given the slump the series has been in for so long it's really cool that they've made a significant comeback with the number 16 it feels like some tension or dissonance has been resolved or like a musical measure that has been

completed as in with the 16th notes there's no other series in the world I want to complete every game from. So this has been a really momentous release for me. Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think this is, you know, can I just say that because I'm not trying to yuck anyone's young. I love that. I love that our friend Matt had a great time with me, too. I think that I wonder if there's something because I've had this discussion with people about Indiana Jones. And I think that there are some people who maybe really didn't like Crystal Skull, but enjoy the latest Indiana Jones because it is something of a return to form, even though I feel like the latest the latest Indy doesn't work at all. And I didn't like it. And I also don't have the objections to crystal skull that a lot of people do so i wonder if there's sort of a thing of like if people really had a negative reaction to 13 and 15 that maybe they're

like more positive on this game whereas someone like heather who absolutely loved 15 is maybe going to be uh you know biased the other way i don't know i'm just a theory i don't want to get too into this the latest indie had me up until act three i was like okay this is like fine not the most fun but fine act three i was like this fucking sucks i was like this is so bad uh i i didn't care for the movie but act three is so batshit that i was like in a series where they've seen aliens and i'm like fine with that as an idea because like who cares yeah the 700 year old grail knight all right fine yeah i don't give a shit and then what happens what happens in act three of indy five is like oh my god don't spoil it don't spoil it because i haven't seen it yet i have i forgot

that nick saw it too that he didn't like it nick after this i'm gonna text you something very specific about it afterward okay great great this one's from uh riley really i'm not sure uh r-e-l-i on on our discord uh sorry for botching that what's up buddy wasn't planning on playing it until i saw my husband do the bahamut fight immediately kicked him off the game and started it myself. The game is gorgeous. The fighting is super enjoyable and I really enjoyed the story beats. 10 out of 10 would kick husband off the PS5 again to play.

Great. Great. Glad you had fun with it. I'm also glad. The combat is great and it is gorgeous. It does look pretty good. Even though it's like ugly. Like the stuff that pops really pops um this one's from garu hodo uh medieval english kaiju simulator 16 is one of my favorite games this year and it's a

crowded year that's honestly kind of how i feel about it too like i know that like you know i i did you know levy some complaints also uh along with the with you two i obviously liked it more than you guys in general in a year where tears of the kingdom didn't come out and this game came out instead it might be my number one uh but because tears tears of the kingdom is on a completely different thing and also uh i liked it a lot more than than this uh well also i think like and and and for my experience like a big part of how you respond to a game is like when it hits you and what the other context is i think if dave the diver doesn't like come out of nowhere this past month and absorb so much of my gaming time i probably would have put more hours i mean i definitely would have put more

hours into final fantasy 16 and i might have a different take but you know unfortunately the game of the year came out uh by sheer coincidence i will say that that it's in part because my hours are so shifted that nobody is ever online when I'm ready to play Fortnite. But the last month, I have mostly played Final Fantasy with very few Fortnite breaks. And considering the, uh, the tonnage of fortnight that I was playing before that. Um,

it's not, it's not a bad game. Like final fantasy is not a bad game. Um, and I don't resent that I've had to play it for the show. Um, it's just, just not, not for me, not for you. That's show. It's just not for me. Not for you.

That's okay. Here's somebody that might agree. This is Ace3. What's up, Ace3? The highs are high, but man, the game can drag in between those moments. But overall, enjoying the game almost up to the final boss. Now, it took me way too long to realize that I could actually mix different icon powers into the different icon base sets oh that's you have to know that you can do that yeah it kind of does it for a game that has like a lot of hold your hand through some of

the tutorials like as some certain aspects like that i feel like are kind of buried some of the aspects yeah like of like the gameplay are like buried for how much there is like you can look at anything like and they'll tell you you know like lore and stuff like that like they're like very like you can find anything how to do in any of this but like you have to mask like i don't think there is like a specific tutorial that's like or like a menu that tells you you have to master, like, I don't think there is, like, a specific tutorial that's, like, or, like, a menu that tells you. You have to master an icon ability for you to be able to place it within a different set. Like, let's say you have the Phoenix one, but you want to use a Gerudo ability in one of those slots. You have to master one of those slots, which is using experience

like, it's called a different thing. I can't remember what it's called. Ability points or something. Yeah, which is just, and I'm sorry to cut you off, which is just another thing that just kind of like upgrading your, effectively what the skill tree is in the game

also kind of feels kind of inconsequential and what is this all right so i've mastered this thing all right sure and then you can put it though you could take it out of the gerudo one and you can put it you know in titan or in uh phoenix or whatever or if yeah effort ifrit um i'll tell you. Late game, you're mixing and matching. You got some good stuff. You got some pretty nice stuff late game. I had a lot of fun at the end. I'm going to trust you on the late game being fun.

You're not going to take my word for it necessarily, but you're going to trust me. No, I will take your word for it. I will absolutely take your word for it. I'm going to finish it. I'll for it. I'm going to finish it. I'll play it. I'm going to play it all the way through, and then I'll be able to say in a couple of weeks

whether or not my mid-game judgment held. Because maybe I'll be like, holy shit, this was great. That was great. This is awesome. This is my prediction. Because Heather has put so much time into it and is pretty close,

Heather will finish it. I think nick might play it for a few more hours maybe and then be like fuck this i'm not doing this yeah i think that's a fair prediction but you know what i am gonna do i am gonna watch rebels of the neon oh yeah it's on movie great streaming service that's yeah, I want to know all about that. This is the last one I'll read. I'll report back next week. This is from Homack on our Discord. What's up, Homack?

I've been a big fan of Final Fantasy for most of my life, but I've somewhat checked out since X. None of the games past it have really clicked with me, but this one was such a breath of fresh air that it's like the first game in the series I've actually reached the end of since X fantastic game wow

very different than 10 too everybody's doing a different journey and I'm here's what I'll applaud there's no other series of games that does this no 100% like go ahead and have it's if you're 16 games into a series and we get to like point at

different ones and be like oh i like that one oh i like this one like there's nothing like call of duty may have 16 games i'm sure it does but you don't like nobody's like, man, the Call of Duty where you were like dogs instead of soldiers. It's crazy. And it's a strategy game. Yeah. You know what? It's like if you look back at the Super Nintendo Zelda or the Super Nintendo Mario games and you you can draw like a squiggly line to Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Odyssey. It's like, okay, this is like a 3D version of the same core fundamental gameplay

evolved in a lot of, you know, over the years. I think if you look at Final Fantasy 4, which Matt is playing now, and you look at Final Fantasy 16, it's like, wow, that's like a complete departure from the conventions of the series in a cool way. So yes, that is, that is,

I like that about this game. I like that they took that swing. And that's it for the Ryu crew, everybody. Thanks for writing in and being part of our cool little Discord community. We love that.

And that's this week's Get Played. Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram. And hey, we've also got our paywalled show Get Animated going, which you can now find only at patreon.com slash get played. Heather, Get Animated this week. Well, we're back on our shit covering the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, mid-2000s mega hit, season two, and we're watching episodes 13 and 14? That's right. That's right.

So come check us out on patreon.com slash getplayed. You don't have to like anime in order to listen because it's just us. We're just talking about stuff. But if you like anime, then you will definitely love it. Yeah's just us we're just talking about stuff but if you like anime then you will definitely love it yeah just as we have listeners who apparently don't play video games and listen to this podcast we also have listeners who don't watch anime and listen to get animated so you know you can be in that demographic you like but i would i encourage you to watch along

the show especially this one this one's a lot of fun it was new to me and matt but i'm really enjoying it melancholy of of Harui Suzumiya. Our episodes, patreon.com slash get played. Guys, I think, I think you all got played. Oh shit.

Fuck. Got us. Heroes