I don’t generally play RPGs. I don’t have anything against them as a genre, or as a like mechanical exercise - I just disconnect somewhere around the 20 hour mark and wind up never re-connecting without any clear reason.
This has happened to me enough times that I’ve been through what I have come to call ‘The Critical Cycle’: Stage One; the game is wrong and stupid for forcing me to disconnect from it. Stage Two; the whole genre is wrong at its core, evidenced by my repeated disconnects. Stage Three; actually everyone else who has ever talked about the game is wrong, and my disconnect is proof that I am appreciating it on a uniquely different level. And finally Stage Four; nothing wrong with me - nothing wrong with these games either, everything falls apart and comes together in this vast and fucked up world so we might as well give the things that appeal to us a try, even if they don’t stick.
There are probably other stages further along that I haven’t reached yet, but right now I find myself completely satisfied with where I am - trying games that I would traditionally bounce off without a shred of expectation, letting myself be beguiled by any and every promise.
Fuck it, we ball.
I gave it a shot, I bounced off, I bounced back, I loved it - FFXVI was a great time and a charming, wholesome reminder that striving for a better world is a dream that we need to hold on to, share, and never stop fighting for. The game tricked me into its earnestness, hiding behind a dark fantasy story of revenge, violence, and slavery, only for our protagonist to grow up, learn his lesson, and then spend the next half of the game teaching it to others. I fully bought into it - past the fantasy politics, intrigues, and world-building lay the simple fiery heart of something like Gurren Lagaan or G Gundam. We are encouraged to strip away the adult artifice that builds and twists the world into something unsolvable, and instead choose - actively, aggressively and with great resolve - to believe in ourselves and in the people around us.
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| I think they'd be friends |
But I don’t want to talk about the game, I want to talk about the combat. I’m sure that for other people FF16’s combat fluidity was an amazing lesson in the broad horizons of the fight, a fun expansion on the real time combat of XV and FF7 Remake Part 1. For me it was a frustrating exercise in seeing something that I immediately loved being ground down into a dull paste by the word ‘Stagger’.
The Stagger mechanic needs to go away. Please, for the love of god, either use it meaningfully or shelve it. We are in a zone where ‘Stagger’ is a ubiquitous part of JRPG lexicon and it will never leave until we get its stamina bar to a certain threshold so that we can start doing critical damage to it. It has become a rote and boring way to interact with combat, and its existence in this game funnels an expansive field of potential choices into a repetitive grind.
I think that FFXVI has one of the best designed combat engines that I have played with, full stop. It’s astounding - every single skill you learn, every Eikon, pretty much everything (other than the big flashy super moves) changes the combat environment and allows you to control it in a different, more dynamic way. The detail and depth is staggering - you are the master of your environment and the only limit is the knowledge of your skills and the imagination with which to combine them.
If I hadn’t already had the link to DMCV pointed out and advertised to me, I would have seen this as an incredibly worthy and extraordinarily faithful bearer (FFXVI JOKE) of that game’s legacy. It really is that good.
The issue isn’t with the combat - it’s the goal. You aren't fighting to have fun, you aren't fighting to get better at the game, you aren't fighting for a reward or rank, you are fighting because the game wants you to take some time before the story moves on. Partway through the last third of the game, after the sky gets a little fucked, I found myself wondering if I would be happier with a more expansive skill tree, with some timing-based sword combos, maybe with a hat that I could equip that spends Gil in combat. Then it hit me - no, you fool, you moron. It isn’t the moves that I am doing; it’s that none of the moves that I do in the game matter. None of them. They’re just fucking buttons.
Somewhere along the line FFXVI had lost the mandate of heaven (my engagement), and it was because fighting - fighting using one of the best, most in-depth systems I have seen in a game! - had stopped mattering.
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| I love Nektar so much - Not really related to combat but he's so good man look at him |
There is an uncomfortable tension in the game between ‘raising stats to make the numbers go higher’ and ‘balling out of control, super stylish style’. The story goal is the same as in DMCV: get strong enough to kill a god, but in FFXVI we are consistently held to an absurd numeric value that starts to build an ocean between the mechanical depth and what we’re using that depth for. Our strength in this game reaches a personal skill ceiling quickly, and then we're held back from exploring further as numbers just go up gradually with levels and shinier swords - our ability to be strong is constantly shackled by a game that has run out of patience with us fucking around. Juggles mean nothing because you can only do them on small mobs, small mobs mean nothing because they never pose a threat, there are a million ways to move and to reposition others in a violent dance of elegant combat and it just doesn’t do anything.
The enemies are not smart or varied enough to force us to use our tools, so the payoff for learning and stringing together moves, keeping track of cooldowns, switching Eikons etc. is that you reach the exact same level of effectiveness as mashing randomly. This is bad! It's annoying, and so 'Stagger' becomes less of a core problem as a concept and more the number one symptom and herald of the problem; this big yellow bar that appears in the most bombastic moments of the game to remind you that you are here to press buttons, not to use skills. We stagger the big enemies not because 'Stagger' is inherently bad, but because FFXVI cannot figure out any other way to represent these larger, more threatening enemies.
After a while it certainly starts to feel like the game thinks I cannot be trusted with remembering, optimising, thinking - every "-ing" that requires the player to be engaged while playing, really. I trick myself into being switched on and active then I slip a little, my brain turns off, and I mash my way through a fight. The game doesn't seem to notice the difference.
For combat-focussed character action games - of which FFXVI could have easily stood amongst the best - the trick to a dangerous enemy, or a uniquely dangerous group of enemies, is usually found within your core toolset - stunning, juggling, repositioning, and parrying until you are elegantly and effortlessly pirouetting on a knife-edge, where a single mistake can mean death or, worse, a D-Rank. Here the knife-edge is neither sharp nor thin, replacing ‘danger’ with ‘stagger’ so that your dazzling moves are reduced to actions for actions’ sake. When there is no risk, there is no tension or reason to explore the game mechanically - even at the very end it feels like the game is just deathly afraid of punishing you for not paying attention or not using your skills correctly, refusing to acknowledge the player's ability to learn and refusing to present us with any kind of friction that might make our fights a struggle worth overcoming.
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| :) |
Ok, so perhaps the game just gave me too much time overall to spend with these tools to the point of exhaustion. In smaller, tighter games like DMCV and Bayonetta this is an impossibility, but hey maybe great combat gets tiring and loses meaning through Gamer Ennui. The encounters don’t stop, and after a point it’s fair to say I no longer sought them out to indulge in the gifts and mechanics I had been so generously given. Possible, for sure, but then - during a later story mission - I found myself using Shiva’s ice dodge to freeze an enemy in place and reposition before spending the level 3 Zantetsuken to combo from a move I have never seen Torgal do before. My third eye is opened, the game is a broad horizon with unlimited opportunities, fuck me, this is fun as hell.
Then I encounter the boss in that area, a late-game challenge with a cutscene heralding the arrival of a huge lumbering destructive force with a terrible attitude. The yellow bar appears at the top of the screen, stretching out into eternity, and I am reminded that my brief joy in expressing myself through combat is about to be reduced, again, to throwing numbers at a bigger number until it's over and I can get back to believing in the burning fist of my heart or whatever.
FFXVI doesn't really want me to fight - it fucked up by letting me fight so well and so creatively with so few guardrails. FFXVI wants me to win, and it wants me to win in a certain way, having levelled up a certain amount, and taken a certain amount of time - and in doing so takes what should be the most fun and engaging moments in the game and frustratingly boils them down to waiting, waiting, waiting for a stupid yellow bar to deplete.
Kweh!
