An epic dark fantasy where fates are decided by mighty Eikons and the Dominants who wield them. This is the tale of Clive Rosfield, a tragic warrior who swears revenge on the Dark Eikon Ifrit, a mysterious entity that leaves naught but calamity in its wake.
Epic isn't making money on exclusives. Square Enix isn't making money on exclusives. Sony probably isn't even making money on third party exclusives. Thankfully, market forces have ensured that it was never going to be exclusive.
Epic never expected to make money on exclusives. They were using them as a loss-leader to force people to use their shitty store. Fortunately it looks like they've lost enough money to make them stop or at least cut back on their shenanigans.
There's a popular urban legend that Square was on the verge of going under and expected the game to be their last, hence the title, but in reality what happened was that the creator wanted the game to initialize as FF and his first choice, Fighting Fantasy, was already taken. He was planning on retiring after the game was published, though, so he eventually settled on Final Fantasy. Still didn't work out, though, because he directed 1-5 and then contributed to 6-10.
As someone who has played every game in the series, the trend has been to make them less like RPGs and more like action games. Gameplay wise, this was far and away the best action-y one and had a decent enough story. Anything compared to 15 would have looked like a masterpiece, lol.
I vastly prefer the more traditional RPGs overall though. 16 was a pleasant surprise since I came in with a bit of a bias against the shift towards action games, and really only gave it a shot because the director has earned a lot of credit with his handling of 14 (the MMO)
FWIW, this is pretty close to how I feel about it. Compared to XV, this game is a masterpiece.
I'd add that the ability recharges make the later combat feel a little bit more ATB-like (to me at least), when you're relying more on those abilities than standard attacks.
Also, I personally think it's the most (or second most) well-told game of the franchise. They do a phenomenal job of setting up different situations with maximum impact. The sad and hopeless feels sad and hopeless, the enraging feels enraging, and the grandiose feels ABSOLUTELY GRANDIOSE.
Very different from previous FF's. You only control one character. Combat is very fun, and you can definitely style on your foes with sick combos. Sometimes basic enemies die too quickly. I enjoyed the story for the most part. I love the characters and the world building is great. The side quests are unfortunately one of the weaker points, which is sad because they make up a ton of the content. Great music and visuals. Weapon upgrade system is pretty basic (number go up). Overall a great game IMO, but I don't think it holds a candle to FF7 REBIRTH.
don't works great on GNU/Linux yet even with a 3080 (very unstable framerate even with low settings). Hope proton will be fixed soon by Valve so this game run like FF7 remake.
EDIT: it's a little better with latest proton GE but still not enough framerate for an DMC-like)
No issues on my playthrough of it this morning. It will complain about your GPU driver on launch, but then proceed to launch anyways after you acknowledge the message.