Video Gamers Podcast - Fantastical Final Fantasy 16 - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: July 31, 2023

Video games Eikons Ryan, Paul and Josh are here with our long awaited deep dive of Final Fantasy 16. It’s been a heck of a year for video games so far and we had a lot of hype leading into Final Fantasy 16. Does this latest entry into the beloved video game franchise make it’s mark or does it fall short of the incredible trailers? We break it all down like only your favorite video game podcast can! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Skippy, Kiitaclyzm, Gideon Is Lit, Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q  Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, citizens of Valisthea, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. This is a Deep Dive Monday, and we will be exploring all and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. This is a deep dive Monday and we will be exploring all things related to the timed PS5 exclusive Final Fantasy 16. I am your host Paul and joining me he is a bearer of magic and he's come down with a terrible case of Crystal's Curse and he might turn to stone before the end of this episode. It's Josh.

He's gone Akashic. Isn't that what the term, right, where they got the ether, too much ether? Isn't it like Akashic or something like that? Something like that. He's got Akashic dementia. And then joining Josh and me, I feel like he would share a lot in common with Hugo, the dominant of Titan, because I feel like he would be thirsty lot in common with hugo the dominant of titan because i feel

like he would be thirsty for benedicta it's ryan why you got it why you got to put me in that bubble man i mean you're right but put yourself in that bubble right it's accurate but anybody's been listening for a while that's all you man just wait till we talked about some other main characters sure all right well before we jump straight into our deep dive about final fantasy 16 ryan can you tell our listeners a little bit about how they can support our show on patreon yes absolutely guys uh so what you want to do is go over to patreon and give us a bunch of money no i'm okay i like this no no no uh so our podcast it you know we rely heavily on uh on you know listener support contrary to popular belief it's not as lucrative as some people would think so we we're not here for the money we we're

here for the games but it helps us keep the lights on. So it does, you know, we're not just asking it for no reason. We do get, you get some perks with that. So you get a shout out, you get bonus episodes, some really cool stuff. So you can just head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com and sign up. And we look forward to seeing you. Absolutely. And we do want to say thank you to our current legendary supporters, Red 88 and gaius 214 and also thank you to our epic supporters ace of shame grilled chicken man draws lol hg knight casmon skippy the

magnificent michael the butler yoda remilia and master wayne 01 i also want to give a shout out to my mom yaya arizona who continues to pledge an old tier that no longer exists, but she is still in there. So thank you to Yaya Arizona as well. Okay, fellas, there's all out war between the nations. We've sworn an oath of revenge. Let's hunt down the man in a robe and find out if he is in fact a second dominant of fire let's deep dive final fantasy 16 okay so spoilers uh usually when we record these episodes we try to keep them relatively spoiler free but this is kind of a tough one because the story of final fantasy 16 very much impacts the

gameplay and vice versa so i feel like with this game more than what we usually spoil we're gonna just have to spoil all things about this game so i think the best way we can do this is that we'll just kind of cover the game chronologically and if we hit a point where you no longer want to hear story spoils maybe you're still in the middle of a playthrough we hit a point where you no longer want to hear story spoils maybe you're still in the middle of a playthrough then maybe that's where you'll want to take a pause if you want to avoid spoilers you can always jump ahead to like the last 15 to 20 minutes and then that'll be where we do our final segments where we do things like our leaderboard hot takes reading community reviews you know things like All right, so here is a description of the game

courtesy of the PlayStation Store. An epic dark fantasy world where the fate of the land is decided by the mighty icons and the dominants who wield them. This is the tale of Clive Rossfield, a warrior granted the title First Shield of Rosaria and sworn to protect his younger brother Joshua, the dominant of the Phoenix.

Before long, Clive will be caught up in a great tragedy and swear revenge on the dark icon Ifrit, a mysterious entity that brings calamity in its wake. I would also like to add here that you absolutely do not have to play Final Fantasy XV in order to enjoy this entry. For people who don't know, Final Fantasy has always, for the most part, been an anthology series. Every entry kind of has its own standalone story, so you can certainly hop straight into 16. Now, since Final Fantasy is a very long-running series,

we always like to talk a little bit about our relationship with the series prior to the deep dive game. I have already shared this on the show before. I was never a Final Fantasy guy. I did play VII, and I liked liked it but i didn't love it i also dabbled in final fantasy 13 i played maybe four or five hours and just kind of fizzled i would not consider myself a fan of the series but what about you guys how about you ryan i don't really remember your history here not much yeah kind of the same as me, just a little bit here or there.

Yeah, just the same thing. I think I played a little of 7, and then maybe 10, and maybe 13 as well. Not a ton. Nothing that I really remember or stuck with me. They've never really been just my type of game. I never really got drawn into them or sucked in. I was playing other games. Yeah, I played, man, into them or sucked in. I was, you know, playing other games. Yeah,

I played man way back in the day. I'm pretty sure I played like the first two or three of them. Um, I, I could not tell you a whole lot about them, uh, at this point, just due to how long ago that was.

I did play seven. I think seven, I I've said it before. I think at the time it was probably the greatest video game ever made when, you know, when it was at its height back then. I don't think you can go back to seven anymore and still like have that appreciation for it. But then I did play the Final Fantasy seven remake on the PS4, which I thought was great. I've played Final Fantasy 14, which was the online. I think I put probably 30, 40 hours into that before i kind of petered out um you know and then um yeah and then now we picked up final fantasy 16 so i don't i can't i with only playing

a few of them i don't know that i can qualify like to say i'm a fan of the series but i'm kind of a fan of the series and that i've always thought like these are good video games. You know, you're the expert here. Sorry, everybody. Now, leading up to the release of 16, funny enough, even though I am not a Final Fantasy fan, I was super pumped for this game. Josh, I know you were as well, because we did cover in one of our gaming news episodes how much we were excited for this one. So what is it different about 16 that had you and I hooked?

For me, the icon fights. I mean, that was in the trailer. I even talked about, dude, this is seriously tempting me to go out and buy like a PS5 because this looks absolutely incredible to me. I mean, Final Fantasy always has some crazy big story that goes along with it and all that stuff. And it's, you know, big worlds and it's always been very RPG heavy. It's your classic like JRPG. I mean, if you think JRPG, Final Fantasy has always been like one of the first things that pops into my head. But the thing that got me and you hyped was these icon fights. These are absolute epic showdowns between Kaiju. I mean, think Godzilla versus Mothra or something like that.

Yeah, King Kong, right? I mean, this is like a spectacle. I remember seeing these trailers and just going, I want to play that game because that looks amazing. I remember saying, I don't know if this sounds weird, but the combat looks beautiful. Like that's what I said. I thought all the abilities looked so neat. I love the scale of the fights. I think it reminded us both of like the original God of War trilogy. It was that kind of scale with boss fighting. Ryan, was this anywhere on your radar

would you have picked this up if you weren't joining us here on the pod no absolutely not no no i i mean i agree with you guys i thought the the fights were cool the sequences especially leading up with the trailers um it just you know it there'd never been my type of game i mean maybe if i saw some cool stuff or i'd check out a demo but i i did like that it was more action based and it wasn't like standard turn-based final fantasy yeah i i loved i love the look of the icon fights but i wasn't i wasn't uh too i wasn't as hyped as you guys were you weren't counting down the days no no not like josh and remnant too oh i know which did release today of this recording and j Josh is hankering for some revenue. I'm not saying I'm bouncing in my chair right now.

Or that I told you guys. Yeah, or that I'm ditching you the second we're done recording this. Which is why we're going to go three hours on this one. Yeah, let's stretch this one out. Yeah. All right. So I'm going to share a little bit more about story than we normally do. Because I think the story of this game is very complicated, but I think it's also really fascinating.

And I just really want to talk about it with some friends. But let's just set the stage for like the first few hours of gameplay, maybe like the first five or six hours. So this game is set in the land of Valisthea. There are different nations battling over control of what they call mother crystals, which can be mined. Now, these mother crystals basically provide ether, which can be channeled to perform magic, and people have become fully dependent on magic to survive. Even farming itself is done through magical means. You take control of a young man named Clive. He is the son of Elwynn and Annabella. Annabella, who we are going to be talking about quite a bit in this

episode, she is part of the bloodline of an icon, the Phoenix. And icons are these very powerful beings that represent different elements like fire or lightning. There's only one of each element, and they can embody a single person, and that person is called a dominant. That person can basically wield the powers of that icon. Now, for some reason, even though Clive was the firstborn, he got passed over as the fire dominant. And Clive basically has to protect his younger son, Joshua, who is a younger teenager. He is the one who is the dominant of the Phoenix. And Clive, even though he is not a dominant, he is what Final Fantasy calls a bearer, meaning he can perform magic.

But if you use magic too much, you can turn into stone. So there's a little bit of a downside. They're also considered like secondary citizens. Even though they're the coolest people in the game, they can wield magic. Everyone looks down on them, which is a little goofy, but that's just like the choice Square Enix made. You also have a quote sister, Jill, who was taken from another nation. She grew up with you.

Think like Theon Greyjoy, if you watched Game of Thrones, how they like brought him to ensure peace between the nations. So in the very beginning, you do a couple early missions. They teach you the combat system. You learn all the buttons. You can block, you can parry, you can shoot from range, range you can swing your sword when you guys did those very first missions what was your initial impression of the story and the combat why isn't circle dodge why isn't circle

dodge that's ryan hated this and i know josh told me later i you can change it i'm too lazy to do that i dude the fact that you were complaining about that the whole time you were playing this game. And then even when you were like, you'll see, Josh, you'll see. And I was like, can't you just read like, does this game not let you change your controls? And you're like, I don't know, but it's terrible. And then I get like, because, you know, Ryan lent me his PS5 so that I could play this. And the very first thing I do is go into the control scheme and it's like, Oh, Hey, you can put Dodge to circle. And then it was, and they were like, Oh, I mean, I will say story-wise,

I actually got excited because it seemed like this was going to be this really grand kind of entrance to this series. I have not played a Final Fantasy in a while, you know, any of the modern ones. And again, Final Fantasy XIV was like an online MMO. So I don't know how much that ties into all these stories and everything. And so, you know, I just remember thinking like, here's a kingdom, here's the characters.

The graphics are gorgeous, man. I remember being like, whoa, okay, this game looks great. And really just kind of being drawn into like, okay, man, this is going to be really good. This is like, you know, all right, that guy's that guy. He's a shield. Oh, he's dueling this guy. Okay, that's the sister.

Who's this girl over here? You know, and just kind of really getting, you know, very attentive to what was going on with the story. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because the way that the game works, the one fear I always have when a game has a lot of melee combat is that I don't like to have to chase enemies on the battlefield. That's one of my biggest complaints about Dragon Age is that it's really hard to play as a warrior. Well, Final Fantasy kind of fixes that because the circle button, which Ryan always used to try to dodge, is actually an ability that immediately teleports you like 20 yards.

And most of the time that puts you right next to the next enemy and you just keep wailing away on them. I will say the combat, especially in the beginning is a little button mashy for sure. You've got combos. Like if you press square four times in a row, you do a combo. So it's a lot of like mashing the square button.

And you do also have a couple of like cool down fire based abilities. And those are kind of neat. So like the early ones you get, one of them is kind of like a fire uppercut, I guess. And then another one makes you like spin in a circle and it does fire AOE damage. I thought that was kind of neat. The one thing I was a little worried about in the trailers were well actually we'll get to that in a minute let's talk about boss fights because this game throws boss fights at you left and right like there's no tomorrow every five minutes you're fighting a boss

and i thought that was really cool yeah like to be clear this is not the gigantic epic icon fights those are actually something different but this game does a very good job of throwing kind of like a random mob boss at you, you know, and I'm not talking about Tony Soprano here. I'm talking about like, you know, some giant night, like you kill a bunch of soldiers and then some, you know, resplendent night in this big shining armor and a flowing main, you know, jumps down off of like a castle wall and crashes to the ground in front of you. And you're like, oh, boss fight. All right. You know, and then you fight that guy for a little while and it does throw those at you at a pretty good clip. And I like that, man. I mean, I like a hard challenge. I love Elden Ring games like that.

I want boss fights in games, you know, And this game feeds them to you fairly quickly in that regard. Yeah, I thought that part was pretty neat. And then it was neat, too, how those boss fights, it wasn't just some guy that was just real tanky and real strong. He had a lot of cool mechanics and power-ups and abilities as well that you had to dodge or just dash towards him like I would. But yeah, I thought that was neat as well they put a lot of those in and they were all a little bit different it wasn't always the same

just mob boss with each one as well so i thought that part was cool yeah one thing that's kind of interesting with boss fights is that bosses have this like will meter i think is what they call it and when you break the boss's will, then they're staggered. And that's basically like, how long would you say that lasts? Maybe about 10 seconds. Yeah. It's probably something like that.

Yeah, 10 seconds seems about right. It feels pretty long. It's long enough for you to feel like you're going ham on the boss. Because usually you could cycle through your little tree, skill tree of, you know, all your cooldowns. Yeah.

So they like fall like on a knee or like on the ground and then you kind of go ham. And then at the end of that, they tell you how many damage points you did while they were staggered. At first I thought that was really cool. But after like the fifth or sixth boss, I was like, it's actually kind of boring just to wail on them when they're not moving. I actually liked it more when they were making me dodge and get out of the way and, you know, do other things. I was going to ask you guys in regards to the boss fights, because I'm curious if it was just me, but did you, after a while, start to feel like they were just damaged sponges? Some of those boss fights were just so long, man.

Oh, so long. And again, we're not talking the epic clashes between these you know phenomenal like monsters we're just talking about your guy with his sword slashing this boss and dodging this attack and sometimes i was like why is this fight taking so long man like am i under level do i not have the right sword like what's did i miss a treasure chest somewhere where i'm supposed to like do more damage like i did feel like they drug out way longer than they needed to why won't you die yeah oh yes perfect yes exactly like i've hit you like 5 000 times you should be dead by now oh yeah there's some fights that probably last a little too long there was one point where i and and we'll talk a little bit about like crafting and upgrading in a minute but i just kept playing the game without buying any new weapons or upgrading until that got a little

frustrating and then i went and looked in the vendor and sure enough i had already missed four upgrades oh wow and my attack basically doubled and then after that the fights were a lot shorter so for me i actually accidentally made my fights too long and then they felt a lot better but there are some that are pretty lengthy uh okay so at this point you know we kind of hit like the first twist in the story and this is still pretty early on in the game the the whole nation of rosaria where you are growing up it's under surprise attack and it feels a little fishy you can kind of tell it's a little bit of an inside job there's people on the inside of the castle murdering like people of your nation and you

very quickly find out that annabella your mom has betrayed your country she sells you out to the land of sandbrek to give them the land. She has her husband killed. And then Joshua, with all his swirling emotions, he turns into the phoenix, the icon, and basically has no real control of himself. And then all of a sudden, we see a second fire icon, Ifrit, which shouldn't be possible because we're told in the game there can only be one fire icon but there's actually two and efrit defeats the phoenix and joshua's dead so your brother is toast you kind of get like crushed under some rubble um basically clive remembers seeing a guy in a robe and thinks oh that must be the dominant. And he swears an oath to revenge, kill him basically. And then Annabella realizes that you're still alive. And at first thinks

about having you killed and then says, oh, instead I'm just going to have you enslaved to the Sandbrek army and basically signs you up. And now you have to fight under a different nation's army. Guys, I think Annabella might be the most evil mother and wife I've ever seen in any game, movie, or show. She can enslave me anytime. She's like a beautiful black widow. She's deadly, but bring it on. It is kind of like one of those things where it's like

okay this is like the big betrayal of the story this sets up like why you are in your current non-prince situation anymore um so it does a good job of like kind of transitioning between oh you're part of a royal family to now you're just some scrub soldier somewhere like you know on some mission that you don't really understand. So this is one of the things that the game does is where it kind of has the flashbacks, but then the flash forwards, and then the flashbacks, and the flash forwards.

A lot of time jumps. Yeah, and so it definitely leans into that. You do wind up absolutely hating the mom at this point. And as the game progresses, you find out that she's really just the worst person ever and it's not just the one betrayal either so you know this is again i'm i'm invested in this right like oh betrayal the you finally get to see the phoenix which is the first like oh man this is cool and then if it comes around and you're like well this isn't supposed to happen and there's

this epic fight i mean mean, again, just I'm going to keep using this term spectacle because that's kind of what this game leans into is the spectacle of this giant fight. And then it kind of moves into the future where it's like, OK, now you're just a scrub soldier. Yeah. So that's actually a 13 year time jump. So you've been serving in this army for 13 years, stewing every day, wanting to avenge your brother's murder. And so you're like fueled by that revenge as Clive, which I thought was really interesting. You find out that you've been sent on a mission to assassinate the dominant of the Iron Kingdom, which is a funny name because they definitely stole a lot of stuff from Game of Thrones here. They're even using the names of nations and stuff like that uh clive goes and

basically they find the dominant and the dominant is dun dun dun it's your sister jill which is a little goofy because over the course of this game like almost everyone you know ends up being a dominant which is a little funny it's kind kind of like Battlestar Galactica where everyone's a Cylon in the last season. There's a little bit of that going on in Final Fantasy. So of course, Clive is not gonna have Jill assassinated. He refuses to kill her. He actually turns on his fellow soldiers,

kills some of them, and then meets a character named Sid who's running around with your childhood dog, Torgal, which is a little bit interesting so it kind of causes you to like maybe I trust this guy if my dog is with him by the way Sid is voiced by one of our favorite voice actors Ralph Inison he was Lorath from Diablo 4 so he's having quite a year for video game voicing so basically Sid ends up taking you back to his hideout where Jill can recover and your hideout is like your home base for quite a while in this game.

This does bring you into a new chapter. This allows you to craft gear, upgrade your gear. You can take on side missions, bounties, all kinds of stuff like that. Did you guys have a chance to do any bounties or side missions? I was kind of curious to hear what you guys did. I did one or two, to be honest. I came across, to do any bounties or side missions? I was kind of curious to hear what you guys did. I did one or two, to be honest. I came across, I like doing bounties. It's like, give me a special character to fight or a special mob to hunt down or something like that.

And I'll usually do a few of those, which I did. And they were fine. I will say I did a couple side missions. Those were pretty darn lame, to be honest. I did appreciate the fact that this almost takes the page out of Lost Ark, where they're the easiest side missions in the world. You talk to this person, and then sometimes you just walk 10 feet, and then it's like, oh, well, hey, this guy told me to come see you. And it's like, mission complete.

And you're like, oh, what was the point of that? But they were just, i'll be honest i i found the side missions to be very lame in this game and not really serve a purpose other than to make me feel like they're just trying to drag out like the length of the game like honestly i didn't find any other reason for the side missions in this game yeah i felt i felt the same it felt like almost like busy work just kind of simple nonsensical things that really didn't serve much of a purpose and it's not like you got a big benefit for doing them so i i did a few as well but i mainly stayed to the the main storyline because i wanted to get

more of those freaking icon fights yeah now i will say i will say for people that are completionists or really really invested into the characters in the story that some of the later side missions do tie up some of like the character arcs. Like nothing is major by any means, but it's like, they do kind of just put a bow on certain things, but it's like, it's really just not worth it at that point. Yeah. To me, it just wasn't worth it. It wasn't grand enough to be like, Oh, it's not like Witcher side quests where it's like, dude, this is better than the main quest in this game. Like nothing like that whatsoever. Yeah. I was also just so curious to find out the next part of the story and to get to the next icon fight. So it felt like obstacles in the way. I feel like if I did a second playthrough,

I'd be far more likely to do more side missions and maybe I would find it more interesting because it would be new content. But just like you guys, I mean, I've mostly shotgunned the main campaign. This is also the point of the game where you start having a lot more points to put into your skill tree. Did you guys have any particular thoughts on the skill tree? It reminded me most of God of War, actually. It's pretty similar in some ways. Y'all know I love me a skill tree. Give me skills. Give me upgrades to those skills. The skill trees in this game are based on the abilities that you have. We'll talk about how you get those here in just a minute, I'm sure. But the skill trees are separated into the different powers that you get. And I like that. I thought that was really cool because not only when you

unlock a power, do you now have that power, but now you have a new skill tree to go along with it. And I thought, I was like, Ooh, this is a neat reward system. You know, there's somewhere it's like, you can learn a skill, but then you can master a skill. And there were times where I'd master a skill and then I'd be like, what did, what did that do? Like, is it any different? Like, I don't really like nothing's changed that i can tell is it just doing a little bit more damage like so there i felt like parts of it were underutilized but then parts of it were great because you literally unlock like a new attack that's in this you know particular tree or even kind of something akin to like an ultimate that's in that tree that you could do and you had to save up for these and spend a lot of skill points yeah to get those if you wanted them which of course i'm saving up for like give

me the big wombo combo man like i don't need this little dash cheesy thing like give me the the you know super spectacle yeah it was kind of funny because some of the abilities you can unlock were crazy cheap it'd be like two or three hundred points and it would just be as simple as like well after you do a four combo attack hit triangle to do a little fire burst at the end yeah and it's like okay well it's so cheap i'll just buy it but then there were upgrades that to me didn't really feel worth it you were far better off saving for the big ones which would cost like a few thousand so a lot of times i found myself just saving points and going for those major upgrades. I think that was kind of the best way to play it. Yeah.

I don't know about you guys. This is for me. This was probably the low point of the game. This to me. And I'm talking about before you have like the icon fight with Benedicta. So this is like the very maybe you could call it the end of the beginning or maybe the beginning of the middle stage of the game. This is where I had already done enough combat that I started feeling like, oh, this is really repetitive now. And I'm just mashing the square button. And I was really worried about the rest of the game.

It sounds like you guys kind of felt similarly. I was bored with the combat until you start unlocking these abilities. And I remember watching these trailers and i remember like watching these trailers and being like this combat looks great but you can only four slash combo so many times with long cooldowns on your fire ability and then it's kind of like dude there's got to be more to this game like there has to be right and then you fight like the first icon and then you realize oh i get the icons like powers from this and that unlocks now i've got wind abilities and then i went oh okay this is great but then it's like you you know those those are stretched so far apart that it was kind of like dude i'm so ready to have some

more abilities now and so it was just really weird. It was this weird, like, maybe just in my head from the trailers, I assumed that combat was going to be this super in-depth, you know, mega combo-y type thing with like 50 different skills. And then it's not. And then I kind of went,

well, what is, like, I don't want to hit square anymore. I did also. I thought it was going to be a lot more. There was a lot more to it i'm not as big on on skill trees like you are josh or anything like that but i was expecting more um you like you said you can only hit squares so many times and okay you can throw in a little fireball or you know you can change it up with the different abilities you have you know as far as

what they do but there's only so much and each each one has like, what, five? I think it was like five attacks or something on there. Yeah, maybe, yeah. So there's only so much you can do, but yeah, I felt it just kind of just slowed down, like you're stuck in the mud, where the combat just went boom. Yeah. Yeah, I felt like the game starts out pretty fast,

and then I felt like the car just sort of like coasted from 65 miles an hour down to like 25. And I was getting a little worried. But then, you know, Josh kind of mentioned it here. So like kind of catching things up in regards to the story. Let's just say you end up fighting Benedicta, who is a dominant for Garuda. And so you and Sid team up, you defeat her. And this is like a big twist to the story. You kind of just have your hands near Benedicta as she's like down on the ground defeated.

And you just see like all this green magic essence go out of her through your hands and arms into your body. And Benedicta realizes that her powers are gone. And all of a sudden you now have wind powers. You can call down these talons that benedicta just used against you but now you have them and then i was like oh we're gonna go around killing icons and we're gonna soak up their powers and that totally changed the game for me at that exact moment because i i tried to avoid watching too much online i didn't know that was going to be part of the story. So as soon as that happened, just as I thought I was out,

they pulled me back in. I was 100% on board because now you've got your fire abilities, but now if you hold left trigger, it changes your buttons to all of your wind abilities and they're on separate cooldowns. So this is not like you have to pick and choose. Yeah.

You literally double your number of spells after getting those from Benedicta. Yeah. That was the thing for me is it's like i feel like i'm playing mega man i just beat a boss and now i got their power like this is great man i didn't even think about that it's exactly yeah and i love that in a game man like i i think that is such a cool thing to to throw in there um Um, the, I actually liked Garuda's powers too. So being that that's like the first one you get, like, it's just tons of slashes and stuff. And you can get like this counter ability that if you time it right is really cool and effective and all that. And I thought like, okay, I really liked this aspect

of the combat now. And I'm with you, paul like it really did open it up for me at that point and like ryan mentioned it's i love the fact that these skills are on separate cooldowns and it is flawless to switch between your normal basic skills over to the garuda skills and then over to you know we'll talk about a second but over to another icon skills later on and before you know it you've got like four or five different skills that you can just fire off all willy-nilly and then when the cooldowns are over you can switch back to that one and i was like this is cool it reminded me i hate praising forespoken but it did remind me of forespoken in the sense that it's like you have all of these different like elemental or magic abilities that are at your fingertips whenever you want them. You don't have to go to a town and then say, oh, I think I want to spec into fire now or, you know, and then branch out or something like that.

No, once you get them, you've got them and you can use them quite often. Yeah, and then you can do all the upgrades and all the other cool stuff to it i love the second once i got those i love to see how much i could uh could max out my uh damage yes yeah i'd wait if i still had cooldowns going i'd like wait and you could see their willpower is like down just there then you it's a couple more hits and they'll be good so i'd wait for all my cooldowns to be ready i'm like all right here we go boom hit them knock them down and then just triangle square unload everything yeah i'll just all through them see how many you could get and then see if you can max out 19,000 20,000 25,000 however much it gets to yeah i i love that part of it i thought it was very cool that's almost like the main progression of the game is every couple hours they throw something new at you like

that so it's either absorbing new icon powers or it's like well now you can give commands to torgle on the battlefield and you can tell him who to bite or who to ravage and so i felt like every couple hours they gave you something so it was almost like i just wish they shifted that up ever so slightly because the first five hours started to get a little slow, but then it took off again. And then every couple hours you knew, okay, it's starting to get a little stale, but that's okay. I know there's got to be another icon fight right around the corner. And sure enough, there would be. All right.

So here's where we're going to talk a little bit more about the actual icon fights. So it's a little confusing. Final Fantasy lore didn't always exactly make a whole lot of sense to me in this game but even though benedicta lost her magic she can still turn into her icon form and she turns into garuda and then you go face her and so you end up like losing control. And this is another big twist of the game. It turns out that you turn into Ifrit, the icon that killed Joshua in the beginning. And not only that, but we learned Sid is a dominant because Sid turns into,

you know, he's got his lightning power and then you defeat Benedicta again. And now we understand Clive was actually the second fire dominant all along. He now knows he was responsible for Joshua's death. And that's something that he struggles with a lot over this section of the game. He also feels very lost because his only purpose in life was to kill this man. And now he knows that it was just him all along. That's very sad.

But on the plus side, you get new abilities and you get to fight as ifrit so it's not so bad for the player uh as much as it was for clive but when you do these icon fights like when you turn into ifrit at this stage and it's going to happen several times as you fight icons it changes all your abilities you have a different button scheme. And the gameplay is a little bit different. You actually feel very large because movement's a little bit slower. I was curious to hear you guys talk about it. Did you enjoy the icon fights when you would turn into Ifrit? Oh, baby.

Oh, baby. So good, dude. I mean, dude, just give me more of that. This is the whole reason that we got excited about this game, man. And I mean, I know, Paul, you and I were way more hyped about this, but I mean, I kind of want to know, like, first time you turn into an icon and you're fighting another icon, Ryan. I mean, you got to just be like, sit forward in your chair, right? And be like, is this really going down?

The adrenaline. Oh, yeah. And the way, for me, that was my favorite part of the game fighting absolutely yeah the way there's the mechanics of it too i loved the the fighting style of it the way you could do those dashes and then just you're just sliding across the ground you stop it and you can do the slashes and you still have the dash ability and then you know you can still power up every part of that. I love that was by far my favorite part of the game.

And they were always such cool stages. Yeah. Like you weren't just fighting in, like I see sometimes you watch games and it's like, Oh, it's just a wide open field. And that's like boring. Like you're not fighting in boring settings.

It's incredibly epic. And the game also throws that you you because i was a little worried about quick time events when we saw the video footage this game has some of the coolest quick time events or results that i have seen honestly they're cool yes because they look they look amazing it's not as simple as like in some games oh someone's uh coming at you with a knife and mash the square button to stop them from stabbing you it's a little more it's it's not that it's almost more cosmetic it's not hard to do the buttons there are what they call cinematic strikes blocks and clashes i think are the three yeah but you'll be in the middle of this epic fight and then all of a sudden the enemy goes in for this

big hit and then it'll just pause and let you hit a qte and it's just to block but it's always this like really crazy athletic ability that your character does and it's fun to watch it's super cinematic yeah it's the best way to use quick time events yeah it really is like i felt very rewarded for pushing a single button when with a very generous timer i mean you get like very you get a solid like four seconds to like push this button but when you know before it even pops up like you know oh i'm gonna have to press square immediately or r1 but you yeah i mean you push it and then all of a sudden this cinematic that's already happening like this epic fight and then your guy will like slide out of the way do a flip jump up run up their arms stab

him in the eyeball you know and then it's like okay well that was pretty cool or if you miss if you somehow whiff because i did like you know then your guy gets pummeled like there is actually like a result to the negative and to the positive and the cinematic kind of just rolls with that so i thought it was really neat touch i don't think i don't know that i've ever enjoyed the result of a quick time event more than what final fantasy 16 gave you yeah and it just like you said it was just so beautiful the way i remember when we first got i think i was the first one to get on and i played like five or six hours that first day and i just like cracked out and uh kept playing but i just remember sending you guys pictures like guys this it looks amazing i couldn't get over how beautiful the game looked yeah yeah it looks absolutely

fantastic all right well i got so excited and worked up guys i totally blazed past our ad break uh josh thank you for the reminder let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back with more multiplayer gaming podcast Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. The credit card that rewards your good financial habits. Earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month.

Level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply okay we are back so basically this is going to catch us up here through the rest of the game so if you want to talk about like major spoilers this is where we're going to talk about end game stuff i'll do my best to keep this quick but it's probably going to take about a minute or two at At this stage of the game, you discover, Clive discovers, you already know, but Clive finds out Joshua didn't actually die all the way back at the beginning. He survived. You are now with your brother and you learn that using the mother crystals around the nations, it's actually causing blight and destroying the land and so basically all of you

decide to team up and you're gonna go destroy all of these mother crystals and when you destroy the first one there is a new big bad that you didn't know about previously called ultima and it kills sid so sid's dunzo he's dead then we have a time jump of five years. This game covers like a large span of time. And Clive is now going by the name Sid. He kind of takes it up more as like a title of like the rebel leader and fighter. So Clive, Joshua and Jill join up and they're basically hunting down the mother crystals to destroy all of them in the hopes that once they're all defeated, it will destroy the ability to use magic and stop the blight. They end up confronting their mom. She's still awful.

Yep. She has a new kid who dies and yes, it's sad, but then Annabella commits suicide. Hooray. Good riddance is all I have to say about Annabella. I've never been excited by a suicide scene, but this one actually did.

I was glad she was out of the story at this point. Well, even in the very beginning, like, because Clive got passed over, she treated him like just hot garbage. Dirt. Like, yeah. Total dirt. This game makes you hate her big time.

Yeah. Yeah. You're not shedding any tears for Annabella. So then basically we find out all of these things about Ultima. Turns out he's basically like an evil god. He's actually the one who created humans. He thought that they would serve him. He didn't expect them to rebel. And it turns out that he is the one that gave Clive the ability to consume icon powers. And he is just waiting for Clive to collect all the icon powers. And then he's going to use Clive as his vessel to take over the world. And I thought that was kind of an interesting little twist here

later in the game. Basically, they end up confronting Ultima and after round one, Clive absorbs Joshua's powers and Joshua dies actually for real this time. Clive then defeats Ultima in one of the coolest boss fights you can ever see if you never play this game go look up this fight it's incredible and then clive ends up defeating ultima and destroys the final mother crystal ridding the world of all magic and saving the world clive then dies question mark on a beach um put a pin in that and then we see a post-credit scene where a mother is telling her two sons at some point in the future that magic is just a fairy tale and then we see on the table there is a book titled final fantasy and it says written by joshua rossfeld which makes

no real sense because we know joshua died so now, what I think most people interpret it to mean and what I think is interesting is that maybe Clive actually survived the fight with Ultima because we know in the past Clive took on the name of Sid after Sid died. So maybe Clive penned this book under his brother's name. Plus Clive is the one who narrates the game from beginning to end. So it would kind of make sense that what he narrates us is what's in this book. But in any case, we don't absolutely know for sure. I absolutely loved this story. I loved the twists. I loved the side characters. I love that the ending is ambiguous. I was curious to hear your guys' thoughts. What are your overall thoughts on the story? I thought it was pretty good. I felt like it was...

I just kept... You know when we talked about hitting a wall? I felt like with the story, it just kept... It's like that movie that's two and a half hours that probably should have been an hour and 45. There's just too many mother crystals for you. Yeah, there's just too many. And it just kept...

And then, okay, it's like Joshua dies and this happens. Okay, now Sid dies. just two men. And it just kept... And then like, okay, it's like, you know, Joshua dies and this happens. Okay, now Sid dies. Okay, now... And it just kept going. And at one point I was just like, man, I mean, I'm enjoying it, but it's like, when is this thing going to end?

How long is this game? Part of the issue for me, I think that the story idea is good. And people do joke around that they rip this off from Game ofones in so many ways you know i think the main issue with the story for me is that they really really want to tell the story through cut scenes and this game is 50 cut scene i mean i i'll be honest i like my wife came because i was playing on the main TV.

And she came through and she's like, I thought you're playing your game. And I'm like, I am. And she's like, why is the controller on the table? And I'm like, it's nothing but cut scenes. It's just like, I love a good story, man. But like, this is 50% of this game. And so it's like, can't you tell the story through gameplay like let me do something in that regard so you know yes i like it i like the ultimate you know god and the mystery when

they first meet ultima and clive's he's a likable hero and all that stuff and the characters and the friendships and the time jumps and all this stuff and it it's like, okay, like I'm kind of digging it. But then why are you just forcing this down my throat every 10 minutes with a eight minute cut scene? Like there was just this repetition of like story and then combat and then story and then combat. And the way that they paste it kind of started to grind on me after a while. So it's like, I got no issues with the story other than how they just forced it upon me over and over and over

again you guys know me i love a good interactive movie as a game in long cut scenes it is a total of 11 hours of cut scenes yeah yeah so it's So it's certainly it's certainly not 50 percent, but it's a lot. I mean, this game is what? About maybe 35, 40 hours. So it's about a third to a quarter cut scenes, which is a lot. And they are sometimes quite long cut scenes. Like you might sit and watch a total 15 minute scene here or there. And if it wasn't for this podcast, I'd have half of those dude oh what a shame no i i loved the story even if it was maybe a bit long

all right well let's go ahead and move into our remaining segments here on the show fellas let's do some hot takes yes all right who wants the honors who wants to go first those girls oh oh all right josh oh me oh you want me to go i don't mind yeah you go ahead first you want me to go first all right now remember hot takes you know not everyone's gonna agree with it and i don't care i'm gonna just come out and say it and i I know I have limited experience. As far as I know, this is the best Final Fantasy game. I know a lot of people say seven. I didn't play seven at release.

Maybe it was the best game of all time in 97 or whatever year it came out. But to me, I found this game to be so much more fun than seven. I don't like turn based combat. The combat of seven, I always found to be absolutely dreadful. The cut scenes and the exploration is what I liked most about seven back in the day. This game, I feel like just does it so much better. To me, it really hit on both cylinders of combat and story. I found both to be very interesting and I loved how much they intermixed. The actual advancement of the story informed the gameplay and i thought that was actually done rather well so that's my hot

take best final fantasy game all 16 i haven't played 13 of them but i'm gonna say it anyway 16 is the best one oh what about you josh what's your hot take oh boy i was gonna say my hot take is this isn't this is not even a final fantasy game, which is good because I don't like Final Fantasy. I mean, it's it's for me, my hot take is this is not Final Fantasy. Maybe I'm a little bit of a purist. Maybe I'm a little bit old. But I mean, I've played some of the I didn't play 15 and I've not played the 12 acts and some of these, you know, ones that are out there.

But like I played a pretty good bit of Final Fantasy 14 online before it became realm reborn or whatever it was and i didn't think it was that bad so you know a lot of people have been like oh it's great now but it's like i you know it just it doesn't feel like final fantasy to me there they took away a lot of the things this is not an an RPG at all. I mean, you can tell me that you get weapons and you can do upgrades and stuff like that. No, no, it's just not. It's not an RPG whatsoever. It's, you know, the action combat in the game.

You have gear. Dude, what does the gear do? You have six rings. Yeah, I will argue this to this is not an rpg because this has this is like the the it's like a lacroix right like the the drink where it's like it has an odor of a whiff of an rpg like an actual rpg walked by the studio when they were developing this game and like a little waft of rpg kind of like infused final fantasy 16 on this one so So yeah, my hot take is not an RPG, not a Final Fantasy game. It's an action. Is that a bad thing?

For me, yes, because I was expecting Final Fantasy. But this is exactly what we saw in the 25 minute video we watched that you were so hyped about. This is exactly what we saw. I mean, not really. Parts of it were. Parts of it. Wow. I feel like I don't even understand you as a gamer anymore you don't like any of these games you you don't like any games anymore i love lots of games oh goodness all right what about you ryan what's your hot take well then buckle up paul so oh boy uh i probably should have gone first but mine is similar but totally different than yours because i also said it's the best Final Fantasy game and it's hot garbage. Hot garbage.

I'm going to pull up your comments while playing. Other than... You loved this for at least a while. Parts of it. I did. I loved parts of it. I loved the Icon fights. But other than that, it just... I didn't of it. I did. I loved parts of it. I loved the Icon fights. But other than that, I didn't like it.

Overall, it just wasn't for me. I mean, I liked Good Thing. It wasn't like every other Final Fantasy game because then I probably really wouldn't have liked it. But some of the fights were cool. But it just, to me, best Final Fantasy game. And it's not a good game. Interesting. Are you guys not action RPG fans?

Oh, I love action RPGs, dude. This is squarely action RPG. I love action RPGs. Just not this one. Yeah. Just not this one. Interesting. You guys sure you're gamers?

Oh, well, I'll explain why I say what I say when we get to the Make Love, Marry, Murder. I think it'll give you a little bit more insight into my thinking on this so sure all right well let's go into some community reviews now we've shared a few of our thoughts what does the community say Josh all right so this is a PlayStation game there's no steam for this so we go to Metacritic as a backup Metacritic uses a score of 1 to 10 as like a user rating or 0 to 10 as a user rating system i always pull a range on these so you can kind of get some different opinions on this so the first one this guy gives it a perfect 10 and he says it is the greatest final fantasy game i've played in the entire series it's got great new mechanics with fresh gameplay it makes this game a top contender for game of the year

okay so i would not be shocked if it's nominated for game of the year i would not be surprised at all absolutely zelda but zelda oh zelda's gonna win it no question but it's gonna win yeah zelda's gonna win it all right and then so let's we'll just go to the zero then so this guy gave it a zero and he says the boss fights are super easy the boss doesn't damage you much. The boss health is enormously huge. It feels like you're hitting a huge rock, which doesn't respond back. And above that, the boss staggers. When the boss does stagger, he doesn't wake up for what seems like 30 seconds, which is huge.

It feels like I'm hitting a corpse. The story is like an Ubisoft game. Like, it starts off with a really good mission that creates hype and then the game leaves you like an orphan and you keep doing the same thing over and over again overall it became a boring game okay all right so just too repetitive it sounds like for that yeah yeah and then high promise and then dies this guy gives it an eight uh he says i'm only about midway through but so far this is a pretty solid game having never played 14 and trying twice and never being able to quite get into final fantasy 15 i'm having a blast it definitely isn't a 10 out of 10 game but it's also isn't anywhere close to

a zero like some of these review bombers would have you believe the combat is decent but not great you can button mash and get by but when you learn the timing of combos the combat becomes more engaging i'm personally fine with them moving the series away from the turn-based combat since we have other franchises that can fill that niche it still feels like a final fantasy story but it's a lot different with that said this is the first final fantasy i'm likely to finish since Final Fantasy X. Okay. So good praise there. And then this guy gave it a six. All right.

And he says, Final Fantasy XVI is a big, bloated, inconsistent, but memorable and oftentimes beautiful mess that is in desperate need of trimming some fat. There is a really good 15 to 20 hour action game hiding within this 40 to 50 hour slog that if i was going to write a review that's that's exactly what i would write a review all right so this is interesting because the game is like it's not true open world oh it's not open world at all it's an open segment yeah game which is i think the term they use so it is interesting to have a game set up that way that is this long.

Normally, when you play a game that's more linear, because this game doesn't give you choices. There's only one ending and it tells a story. And it is a little surprising that it's this long. Usually, you would expect a game like this to be in the 15 to 20 hour range. Yes, I agree. All right. So that's four reviews that run the gamut.

As we always do, we try to guess what we think the overall user score is. We don't care about critics. We're all gamers here. We care what gamers think on this. So on the Metacritic scale, which is, again, 0 to 10 using decimals, we're going to try to guess what you think the overall score is. So, Paul, who won the last? Ryan? No, it was Ryan.

Ryan won two in a row streak ryan let's see if you can keep your streak alive ryan where do you think final fantasy 16 ranks amongst users uh i'm thinking i'm gonna go 80 so that would just be an 8.0. Sorry. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. All right. So 80 from Ryan. Okay. Metacritic, usually pretty cranky users, love bringing out the complainers and the review bombs. I think it's going to be below eight, but not by much. I'm going to say, well, actually, I think it's going to be a fair amount below. I'm going to say 7.3.

7.3. Okay. I guessed 8.3. I think the to say 7.3. 7.3. Okay. I guessed 8.3. I think the game's beautiful. I think it plays well. It's Final Fantasy, which is a beloved series. You know, people enjoy action combat and all that stuff. So I think people were going to view it fairly favorable.

So I went 8.3. We've got a new winner, boys, because the actual rating is an 8.2 oh i'm proud of metacritic and i'll be honest a lot of the negative reviews were just blatant review bombs as well people upset saying this isn't final fantasy that's not my final fantasy that i grew up with like you can't go to action combat and stuff like that too so people are so cranky that that's the thing this if you're a hardcore final fantasy fan i totally understand why you would not like this so to to hear if you're not a final fantasy fan and you don't like this to me is almost a little odd but to me i think if you're not a final fantasy

fan this is one to give a shot because it's definitely different from like the old formula that's for sure so that's either a really good thing or a really bad thing for most people yeah all right well i guess as your champion i get to lead us into our make love marry murder segment so hit that music paul let's do it hey benedicta you wanna take me up in your talons and show me your nest i'm not very what was that one ability was it like dark embrace or something wasn't that like the name of the ability yeah she had some she had the best abilities let's be honest so all right this is where we're going to rate the game in our own style uh give our own individual opinions on this uh we rate them make love mary murder murder is hey i don't recommend this game to you. Don't play it. Save your money.

Marry is, I think this game is absolutely phenomenal and should be experienced by just about everybody. And Make Love, you know, it's a, hey, this is a good video game. I think people will enjoy it. I think there's people out there that may not enjoy it, but that's why we do what we do. So you can make that decision. I'll start off because I think Paul's getting the impression that I don't like this game. I do actually like Final Fantasy 16. I do not think that it is perfect by any means, and it has some flaws to it. And maybe I'm just getting old and grouchy. And so I'm starting to point out the flaws of a video game a little bit more. I absolutely loved this game for the first probably 15 hours, to be honest with you. I thought I was like, dude, this is amazing, man. I love the action combat.

I love the icon fights. I love the fact that you get to absorb and use boss abilities. Like, come on, man. But then it just started to slog. The enormous amount of cut scenes just really started to grind on me. And I started to find this repetition where it would be two hours of nothing but cut scenes, and then it would be two hours of combat. And then you'd get back to a town or meet up with somebody and it'd be two hours of cut scenes and then you'd be like okay well we're finally leaving this hideout and then

you'd go slog through the non-open world of combat where it's two hours of combat again and then you'd finally get to an icon fight and then it would just be like oh thank goodness what i found is that i just wanted to get to the icon fights So it's like they're dangling a carrot in front of me with the guy that gave it the six out of 10 that said this should have been a 15 to 20 hour game because it started to feel like a slog after that. I'm with Ryan in that regard. A six out of 10 is a decent score. Like that's saying, hey, there's a lot of people out there that will enjoy this game and it's going to be a lot of fun for a lot of people.

It's just not without its flaws. And that slog that I started to feel was the main flaw for me so i'm gonna rate it a make love you know but again it just it's got some flaws and if you're like paul and you love story and you're like dude i am in it for these cut scenes and you know i don't need super technical combat and stuff like that i think you'll really enjoy it. So here's my follow-up question. Since this is a kind of pricey game, it's 70 bucks. Do you think the first 15 hours or so are good enough to warrant buying the game and quit when it starts feeling grindy? Or do you feel like it's stay away? I mean, it really kind of depends on your gamer budget. You know what I mean? Like,

let's be honest. If you buy two $70 games a year, then no, I don't think it's worth it. But for me, I think the spectacle and the icon fights and the graphics and just the kind of... It's a different game, man, like than most games that are out there. For me, yes, I do think it was worth the $70. But I had almost zero interest playing this game after like the 20 hour mark. Like, honestly, I, at that point I was like, I'm just done, dude. Like this is becoming very repetitive in a slog. That's not to take away from the first 20 hours. So don't, you know, don't get me wrong. I'm not slamming this game. I'm just saying it got to a point where I was like, I'm not enjoying this anymore, but I do think I got my money's worth out of it.

That makes sense. What about you, Ryan? I'm along kind of the same vein with that, too. I just felt, everybody knows I love cinematics and games, you know, Metal Gear Solid, you know, all these games. I'm a big cinematics guy. Having said that, I just felt myself the same, just looking forward to that icon fight, and that's all I really cared about. If they could, game idea, take all the icons, put them in a Mortal Kombat game where you could just have these giant battles, that would be so freaking cool.

When you're Efrin and you're fighting the titan. It'd be a two hour game, Ryan. It'd be the best two hours, man. Beautiful. Beautiful. I love it. So I'm, same thing, it know, same thing. It's a good game. It's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful.

I was blown away by the graphics, all the scenery, the areas, the characters, the vastness of some of the battles, especially the icon fights. It just wasn't for me. Having said that, I'm sure people are going to absolutely love it. It's going to be one of their favorite games, and then people are going to absolutely love it. And it's going to be one of their favorite games. And then people are going to also hate it.

So I'm a, I'm a make love, um, mainly for those icon fights that, that just, they blew me away. I would, I would go,

if I, you know, you go back and you can select what levels you want to do and things like that or battles. I would go back and just play those. If I was going to play more, I would go back and play that. But that's,

that's it. I gotcha. Yeah. For me, obviously it's Mary. It's Mary, Mary, Mary. just play those if i was gonna play more i would go back and play that but that's that's it i got you yeah for me obviously it's mary it's mary mary mary i really liked this game a lot i have not beaten it i didn't have time to finish everything and i'm sure at some point i would hit the wall playing it but i think especially those first 20 hours i think are so good that i would qualify it under must buy um certainly with this being a timed ps5 exclusive this is why you own a ps5 if you own a ps5 you're buying final fantasy uh for almost everyone other than maybe maybe ryan um i found the the the carrot of the icon fights to make sense how far apart spread they were.

I feel like if they gave you those icon fights too close back to back to back, I don't think they would feel special. So I personally liked that they were a few hours spread apart. I loved nothing more than absorbing new powers. Now let's just play around with this for a while. Okay, now I'm going to unlock some new gear. Now I'm going to play around with that for a while okay now i'm gonna unlock some new gear now i'm gonna play around with that for a while unlock some new abilities to me there was always something new i was doing every hour or so so i didn't find that to slow things down until quite a bit later

in the game um so i would still highly recommend it i don't think 70 is asking too much for this game i think it's gorgeous and if you find yourself getting slogged down, then that's when you quit playing. And if you buy it on disc, now you can sell it. So if you buy this game for 70 and sell it in two weeks and get 30 bucks back, I think you're getting well worth your money on this one. Yeah. All right. Well, let's go into our last segment. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right. The Multiplayer Gaming Podcast leaderboard.

Maybe the weirdest thing that we do here on the show. So we each gave this game an individual rating for make, love, marry, or murder. This is where we have to come together as a three-headed hydra and we have to agree as a consensus where are we going to rank this game against every other game we've done a deep dive on so our leaderboard you can find at multiplayerpodcast.com uh we've got stuff on here like uh let's see diablo 4 we ranked at 17 we've got Fallout New Vegas at 34 we've got High on Life at 56 we've got Atomic Heart at 65 and then like way below that we've got 12 Minutes at 84 and then it goes on from there so when you guys take a look at the leaderboard what's your starting point where would you put Final fantasy 16 i got the perfect

spot i love when this happens sometimes i'm perfect for josh but let's hear it sometimes i'm really torn and then sometimes it's like dude i think this fits in perfectly for me number 40 i think this game is better than pillars of eternity dead fire and it's not as much fun as dead island 2 and again i get that those are vastly different games. But for me, I'd much rather play and have fun with Dead Island 2, Deep Rock Galactic, Resident Evil Village. But I think it's a far superior experience. I can't call it a role-playing game because I don't think it is one but i think it's just a good experience um over a game like you know dead fire or like v rising or lost ark or something like that so for me 40 i think is hits the nail on the head i have it kind of in the anywhere in the 20s is kind of what i was thinking you could talk me

into this being better than no man's sky you could also talk me into it being lower than that um so i was kind of anywhere in the 20s we got josh at 40 what about you ryan i was i was pretty close with josh i i looking over the leaderboard i i saw we got destiny 2 at 35 i i basically kind of that was where i drew the line like anything after that i would be that's like your favorite game though destiny 1 was my favorite Destiny 2 was not as good but I had way more fun playing Destiny 2 but anyways yeah it's that's kind of where I'm at but you know there's some flexibility within there obviously we got all right so 40 35 and in the 20s which is probably going to average out to the mid to late 30s how about 36 so we'll put it right

below destiny 2 but have it a well this is the problem like i think final fantasy 16 is so much better than near automata but i know josh loves near automata there's a lot i also think near automata i think final fantasy 16 is way worse than resident evil village so like this is where it's really hard because i think it's way worse than one but way better than the other i'm fine with it being 36 37 38 you guys can call it any any one of those three i'm fine with 36 works for me uh yeah that's fine i paul likes it a little bit more near automata i'd liked near automata i know that some people absolutely love it and they think it's like the most like...

I love the story. I did not like the gameplay. Right, yeah. And so that's fine. I mean, Final Fantasy XVI is a good video game. If you like cut scenes and stories, you'll probably really, really like Final Fantasy XVI. You know what I mean?

At that point, like to one man's trash is another man's treasure kind of thing and where i started to say hey i'm kind of grinding this and it's a slog other people might just get more invested as the story goes and be like this is just getting better and better for me yeah i i hear you all right so we'll plug it in at 36 and that now gives us a total of 101 games on the leaderboard. Josh, I don't think you or I have missed any deep dives, right? We've done all 101 together. We've done every one.

I've missed a twig or two for vacation, and I think that's it. But that's it, yeah. I don't think you've missed any deep dives. Yeah. That's a lot of video games. That's a lot of games. And a lot of those released in the last three years. Yeah. We got a few classics in there, but a lot of new stuff.

All right. Well, that's very exciting. We will clock this one in at number 36. And then I think that wraps up the show. I'm kind of proud of us. I thought this one might go like an hour 20, but we didn't go very long, even though the ad break came very late. All right. Well, thank you so much to everyone for listening to this deep dive.

Our next deep dive is going to be two weeks from now. We are going to be hopping back into the world of deep rock galactic. We previously did a deep dive, but we're getting back into it because that was chosen by legendary supporter, criticalism. And in the meantime, make sure to check out our Patreon options at multiplayer squad.com and

come check out our other episodes. We've got three episodes weekly. We always have an hour long show on Mondays, a 30 minute show on gaming news on Thursdays and a short 10 minute episode called quick takes on Saturdays. And until next time, happy gaming. See ya.

Rock and stone. Prelude to deep rock galactic there. See everybody. Rock and stone. It's a prelude to Deep Rock Galactic there. See ya, everybody. Bye.