Subscribe
Follow Us
The recent PlayStation State of Play for April 2023, featured Final Fantasy 16 gameplay, showing off its combat, characters, and world.
This is not the first time that we got a glimpse of Final Fantasy 16's gameplay. A month ago or so ago, the official PlayStation Blog released a post detailing some of the gameplay features coming to the game. Some of these features were in the April 2023 State of Play, so let's go through those first.
For starters, the 25-minute state of play featured more of the game's combat system. It showed various clips of Clive Rosfield, the game's protagonist, fighting against various enemies. These varied from random monsters like the Malboro to the Eikons themselves. It showed Clive smoothly transitioning from one eikon's powers to the other. This is the central combat mechanic of FF16. Players will have to swap between various Eikons like Garuda, Ifrit, Ramuh, Odin, Bahamut, and Phoenix in combat. Each of these eikons has different playstyles, so players are expected to swap depending on what they need.
They also featured Timely accessories, a set of accessories that aim to help the player in various small ways. The five Timely accessories each have their own function:
- Slowing down time to make perfect dodges easier
- Fully automated control of Clive’s canine companion Torgal
- Automating potion usage when health is low
- Automatically dodging incoming attacks
- Automatically doing combos and finishers using only one button
This is not meant to make the game trivia. Rather, it helps the player enjoy the game more by covering for their possible weaknesses. Speaking of, they brought up the game's Action Focus ad Story FOcus game modes. Both game modes have the same difficulty when it comes to enemies. However, Story Mode lets players use the above Timely accessories so that they can focus more on the game's story.
As for combat, they featured the game's party-based combat. As mentioned before, the player only has to think about controlling Clive. All of the player's party members are AI-controlled. They mentioned in the State of Play that your companions adjust their actions depending on how the player plays as Clive. In the gameplay, they showed Jill Warrick, one of Clive's companions, using her various Ice powers to aid in battle. It also shows off Torgal, Clive's dog companion, attacking the enemy.
With that out of the way, let's dive into the new features. For starters, let's talk about the map. The game has a wide-open map that lets the player fast travel between points of interest. The map controls like your typical open-world map interface, letting players highlight specific locations to show its name, as well as any nearby quests and sidequests. The video then showed Clive exploring the overworld on foot, and on a Chocobo's back. They featured how the Chocobo can “drift” to gain speed, as well as its ability to slowly glide from high places.
Speaking of the map, one of the locations highlighted in the video was Cid's Hideaway. Think of it as the party's base of operations. The Hideaway has basic base inclusions, such as a shop to buy items from and a blacksmith that improves equipment. The shop's inventory will expand as the player makes their way through the game. As such, the player must make sure to check back now and then. The blacksmith, on the other hand, will require materials to upgrade the player's equipment. This varies from monster drops to found items, so the player should try and get every material they can.
The Hideaway also has something called the Arete Stone, where players can practice their moves and get used to their equipment. Think of it like the practice modes available in fighting games, where the player can set parameters to practice. This includes being invincible, having more than one enemy, and more. Players can also use the Arete Stone to take part in trials, where their scores will be compared to those around the world.
While in the hideaway, the player can take on various side quests, that range from defeating monsters to recovering some items. These are optional, but reward the player with money, items, EXP, and more. Not only that but there is also a Hunt Board, which contains various monsters the player can hunt for various rewards. These monsters have a letter ranking, with B at the lowest and S at the highest. Of course, the more difficult the hunt, the more rewards the player will get. After accepting a Hunt request, the player can then head over to the Hunt target's location, and promptly start a fight to take it down.
The Hideaway also has two additional features, the Thousand Tomes and the State of the Realm. The Thousand Tomes contains all of the pieces of information and lore that the player has gathered throughout their travels. Information about Crystals, Eikons, and the like is located here. The State of the Realm, on the other hand, shows the relationship web of the game's characters. Centered on Clive, it shows his connections to the various characters and factions of the game, while also explaining what those connections meant.
Finally, they showed off one of the gameplay features that almost every player is looking forward to in Final Fantasy 16. I am of course talking about the game's Eikon vs Eikon fight. They explained in the video that although these fights are all basically the same, that is an Eikon fighting an Eikon, each of the fights is unique.
For instance, they showed an aerial battle between Phoenix and Bahamut, where both Eikons had to fly and attack each other while dodging each other's projectiles. There was also the Eikon of Fire vs Phoenix fight, where Phoenix was slowly flying away to stay out of Ifrit's grasp. There was also an Ifrit vs Titan fight, where Ifrit had to run his way up Titan's stone appendages while dodging various crystal and stone attacks. Of course, there's also the usual brawl between Eikons of the same size, like the one between Ifrit and Garuda. These fights are chockful of powerful combat, as well as the occasional quick-time event. These keep the player immersed while delivering a memorable fight.
Speaking of the Eikons, as mentioned above, Clive has access to powers from the game's various Eikons. Upon leveling up, the player will earn Skill Points, which they can then assign to a skill tree. This skill tree contains moves from all of the Eikons that Clive has access to. He can spend skill points to unlock special moves, such as special grabs, more powerful attacks, and more. Understandably so, as Clive is the Dominant of Ifrit, he can unlock a wider variety of Ifrit-related skills. This skill tree will expand as Clive makes his way through the game, so players should always make sure to check back to see if they have skills they want to unlock.
Of course, if the player can't decide on what skills they want, they don't have to worry. The skill tree has a feature that lets it auto-assign skill points to skills, automatically unlocking various moves. This feature will try to maximize the number of skills unlocked and skill points used. As such, after using this feature, it is important for the player to double-check which skills they unlocked.
That's all of the Final Fantasy 16 gameplay shown in the April 2023 PlayStation State of Play. The game is available for pre-order right now on PlayStation 5. A PC release of the game may be on the way, however, that still has no date.
Check out our gaming news articles for more gaming news from us.
