Final Fantasy 16: as close to flawless as we've seen in a long time

Final Fantasy 16 arrives in excellent condition, giving players exactly the experience the developers intended.

[Workshyskiver]

As sad as I am to see how action focused the series has become, its great to see how polished and well crafted it is from a technical perspective.

[4Sh0w]

Yeah, personally as someone who never cared for turn based jrpg's, FF16 looks right up my alley. This game is absolutely beautiful and the combat looks fun as hell.

[blackblades]

As someone that liked both, I prefer action over turn in 2023. Imagine turn base for a game like this, that shyt would be much longer and dull later on. Turn base would be fine for smaller games, i liked it in child of light. Also it'll have to have something unique turn base system not the standard one. I remember disgaea to much time on it, I think they added auto mode grinding like gatcha games.

[Crows90]

There will still be ff7 part 2.
This is a continuation of ff15 approach...vastly improved it seems.

[shinoff2183]

Agreed with it all mcardle. That delay did wonders.

[sparky77]

As shown from other sources the performance mode is a complete mess and 30 fps is the only way to play it. Crazy so many devs are just throwing in a performance mode without even trying to optimize you may as well use that time making the 30fps better.

This was likely one of the reasons Eurogamer scored the game 6/10.

[northpaws]

@sparky77

Digital Foundry says performance is flawless and you can still find a way to say it is otherwise... you are indeed something else...

[maniacmayhem]

No where in the article does it say the performance is flawless

[--Onilink--]

Where are you seeing that they said performance is flawless? Literally right from the beginning they said everything EXCEPT the performance mode is great
The game is nowhere near close to 60fps (outside of combat, where it drops to 720p to do it) in the performance mode, and the visual cutbacks are quite noticeable too
This one is looking just like Hogwarts or Guardians of the Galaxy where Quality mode really is the only way to go

[King_Noctis]

You didn’t even watch the video. And as always, comments like this get upvoted on N4G. Smh.

[blackblades]

They said quality mode is 30fps maybe a drop here and there. The performance mode is 60fps doing combat but drops outside of combat. Basically performance mode is quality mode doing traversal and performance doing combat only. Overall i have no issue in that cause I didn't feel like it was distracting when playing the demo cause I didn't really noticed it and being 60fps doing combat is what matter more. Overall hopefully they fine tune and make true performance and keep the these 2 modes.

[4Sh0w]

Blackblades to be clear DF also said the resolution drops to 720p during combat to hit 60fps which makes things blurry like a oil painting as he said, frankly I dont like that, whens the last time we seen a AAA game do 720p???...but overall I still think it's a great game as does DF. We get wrapped up in the specs too much sometimes and lose focus on the big picture= Is it great, is it fun? The lesson again to both console fanbases is remember these are fixed $500 boxes, as devs do more, more sacrifices will be made OR the dev can stay within the limitations of the hardware & make the next amazing card game at 8K 120fps. Me, well I'll take FF16 over that direction any day.

[blitz0623]

They didn't say it was flawless. There are several issues with performance mode, but none big enough that makes it unplayable. Most issues are for nitpickers and performance is prioritized during combat which is where it matters most. He even recommended playing quality mode but obviously that's very subjective.

Quality on the other hand is near flawless 30fps.

[SPEAKxTHExTRUTH]

It’s definitely not flawless. 60 fps mode is terrible and needs major work.

[lukasmain]

"Final Fantasy 16: as close to flawless as we've seen in a long time" - Digital Foundry

[Flawlessmic]

Your having a meltdown at this point 😂😂

Love to see it.

🧂🧂🧂&# 129474; here some more salt, not that you need it

[repsahj]

You didn't watch the video right? the combat is consistent 60fps, it will return to 50s if your out of combat.

[--Onilink--]

Did YOU watch the video? It “returns to 50s” in the best case scenario, but it is constantly dropping to low 40s and even 30s, not to mention it looks significantly worse.

[jznrpg]

@Onilink that’s what VRR is for. Hopefully by next gen everyone should have it but most decent Tvs have it these days . My oldet LG OLED TV from 4 years ago has it and so does my newer LG C1 OLED

[Skate-AK]

@jznrpg To be fair, the PS5 VRR range is between 48 and 120HZ. So it wouldn't help very much at all in this scenario. I have a C2 myself. Fantastic TV.

[--Onilink--]

@jznrpg

As it was mentioned by Skate, the VRR window in PS5 starts at 48fps, so its going to be constantly dropping in and out of VRR. Also the PS5 doesnt do LFC either when it drops below the VRR window which would also help.

That said, VRR is not magical either, having drops as big as going from 60 to 30s or low 40s will still be felt.

The part that baffles me is that the performance is so far from 60 when there are already significant cutbacks in image quality. I wouldn’t mind (though I probably would still use Quality) if they scaled down graphics if it stuck at 60, but right now you are not getting anything out of the performance mode

[GamingSinceForever]

I’m surprised this site hasn’t banned you for obvious trolling. There are opinions but then there are people who like to antagonize and be abrasive for no apparent reason other than they have absolutely nothing better to do.

I’m tired of this site to be honest and it’s because of people like you.

[Flawlessmic]

Yep there just allowed to troll and cause flame wars hiding behind fake concern

[MrNinosan]

Performance runs 60fps perfectly well when it's needed, which is in combat.
Outside combat it dips and will probably be patched shortly.

Even DF is impressed with how polish this game is, which is a big statement. Watch the video, grow a beard and play games you like instead.

[shinoff2183]

Grow a beard lmao

[Tapani]

Agreed. And this is the sole reason I'm not buying the PS5 version. In the demo, I could not take the 30fps due to the camera shutter speed and laggy controls, and the performance mode was all over the place dropping in and out of the VRR range making it extremely uneven and unresponsive. The uncapped FPS without VRR was equally bad, so this is a resounding "No" from performance point of view. Plenty of other games to play at 4K120.

I'll wait for the PC version and do a 4K120 DLSS Quality with RT and other bells and whistles. Given what the creators said about wanting to polish the PC version before getting it out makes me want to wait as well.

[derek]

@Tapani, let be honest you were never going to buy this game, im not even sure you own a ps5. Lol

[derek]

@sparky, go play redfall and leave the commentary on ps5 games for people who actually own and enjoy playing on the system. Lol. "That's why Eurogamer blah blah blah". You not fooling anyone.

[maniacmayhem]

"Unfortunately, performance mode delivers noticeably poor image quality throughout and also suffers from an unstable frame-rate. This was first noticed in the demo, and reappears in the full game even with the relatively small 300MB day one patch installed. In side by side tests, any improvement is negligible, with regular dips below 60fps and even below 48fps - so you're falling out of the PS5's 48Hz VRR window."

And now we should begin to realize why companies make certain decisions for other games that chose to lock down a framerate for consoles..

"It turns out that when the developers mentioned they were targeting 60fps in battle only, they meant exactly that. The second you initiate combat, the internal resolution drops like a stone, hitting as low as 720p in the process."

Now imagine if say a game like Starfield with an option for first person combat shooting could possibly drop to 720 just to maintain 60fps? I don't think anyone would like that option if it meant resolution would dip that drastically.

[I_am_Batman]

The devs already confirmed that they'll work on improving the performance mode based on the feedback of the demo. It's unfortunate that this kind of stuff has to be fixed post launch and it definitely shouldn't be that way, especially for a studio that explicitly takes pride in releasing a very polished product.

The performance mode as it is right now frankly seems like an afterthought. There doesn't seem to be much of a graphical difference between both modes besides the resolution scaling. Because it's the primary scalefactor, it needs to scale quite aggressively to reach the 60 fps target. That's not a great implementation of a performance mode especially when paired with the low-quality upscaling that makes the entire image look blurry. They should be able to do a lot more to free up the necessary render budget to reach 60fps consistently and potentially even end up with a higher quality image, by being less agressive on DRS and potentially implementing a better upsampling method.

Time will tell how much they can do to improve performance, but if people didn't complain and simply accepted the subpar performance mode, they probably wouldn't even try to improve it.

[maniacmayhem]

They already had a patch that based on the feedback of the demo and still there's issues. There's a point here, as powerful as these consoles are, they still cant keep up with the demand of some of these bigger triple A games. So it doesn't matter what performance options a game has, you are going to always have to have sacrifices in one or more areas. Bethesda chose not to have this (for now), what they do later is a different story. But locking 30fps was obviously a better decision because now we see that a game like FF, that is large in scale but not larger than Starfield is having it's own tough time running smoothly in certain areas.

I have no issue with people not accepting a performance mode, it's when people go overboard with their exaggerations on what they think a developer should have done when they have zero knowledge on what that development detailed.

[I_am_Batman]

@maniacmayhem: The demo came out June 12th. The current patch was live June 19th. That's a week. That's not enough time for performance optimization based on the feedback including internal testing, building the patch and submitting it for certification. I highly doubt the demo feedback had any impact on that patch at all.

I also don't get why you keep bringing up Starfield. That's a different game with different constraints. The fact that FF XVI nearly locks to a 60 fps during combat by aggressively scaling resolution down implies a GPU bound performance. As I've mentioned they have room to scale fidelity on many more dimensions than pixelcount, which they seemingly haven't made use of yet. They'll have to implement more sliders for the PC version anyway and people who prefer 60 fps are generally willing to give up some of that eyecandy for a better performing game.

I can't make the claim that a steady 60 fps will be achieved. After all I'm trying to make an educated guess based on a very limited amount of footage that may or may not be representative of the rest of the game, but if the devs say that they will improve performance based on the feedback, I'm inclined to believe them, especially when it seems like there's a lot of unutilized potential on the table.

[maniacmayhem]

*I highly doubt the demo feedback had any impact on that patch at all.*

You're right, definitely not enough time even with internal QA, stress testing and the likes over the years this was in development. Which further proves it may have been the better decision from bethesda to lock their game at 30fps rather than waste developer resources on multiple performance modes that still won't improve the game significantly.

*I also don't get why you keep bringing up Starfield.*

Because people seem to believe that Starfield should be able to achieve 60 fps by sacrificing other areas or it's something that is easy to do only because Sony does it with their games or Bethesda has done it before with older games that is no where near the size of this one. But with FF, the sacrifices are way too great and this is a game that relies heavy on action gameplay elements. Not taking anything away from this game, it's getting great reviews but multiple outlets are writing about the obvious performance issues.

Also, there doesn't seem to be nearly the same amount of outrage from the media and gamers for a game that constantly drops frames and resolution in either modes over having a stable framerate and 4k resolution.

(To be fair it's more gamers than the media)

[Lightning77]

There's a few things here. For both MS and Sony this is the second instance this happened. 30 fps with Redfall. Forspoken 720p resolution to hit 60(still wasn't stable at the time). Maybe it's the engines or design choice? Perhaps both? Jedi Survivor wasn't hitting 60 fps consistently and Respawn even said play it in fidelity mode until they can fix the 60 fps mode. It's starting to look like a toss up now. The first few years after the consoles launch yeah the consoles were hitting 60 fps in every game but then again those games were cross gen also.

Anyway with all the graphical and special effects going on it seems to be taxing on the GPU side of things tanking the res down to 720 while the performance takes over. Regardless sacrifices will be made. That's probably why the guys over at DF can see 30 frames in PS5 Series X only games.

The Starfield 30 frames was indeed overblown when this game can dip as low as 720p like Forspoken. That same energy needs to go everywhere if we're going to over blow things out of proportion.

[--Onilink--]

There are plenty of cutbacks besides resolution in the performance mode though, it looks decidedly worse (not to mention FSR1 with lower resolutions is downright terrible).

As much as I don’t like the idea of having to use 30fps, at least that mode seems quite consistent. I’m definitely not going anywhere near that performance mode from everything I’ve seen so far

[I_am_Batman]

@maniacmayhem: I've specifically addressed your claim that the current patch was based on the demo feedback. The development time prior to that is irrelevant to that point. I've already said from the start that this shouldn't be a post launch issue at all.

To your point that there is less outrage in the case of FF compared to Starfield: First of all there was enough outrage, that Square felt compelled to respond to the issue. They responded in the best way possible, by acknowledging the performance issues and promising to improve it with upcoming patches. Bethesda on the other hand straight up said they aren't planning to implement a performance mode at all. I don't see why you'd expect the same reaction in those two situations.

@Onilink: Some aspects are hard to judge from a compressed video, but at least draw distance, foliage and wind simultaion seem exactly the same on both modes judging from the limited footage I've seen here. LOD scaling also seems identical although it's hard to be 100% sure because of the image quality difference caused by the lower resolution. There is difference in shadow quality as John mentioned, but that's obviously not enough to significantly improve performance. He also mentions pop-in, but even this video shows it happening at the exact same time between both modes at different point in the game. If I get the game today, I'll check the graphical differences out on my TV, but it seems like there's a lot more room for scaling certain aspects back to improve frame rate.

[repsahj]

Lol the performance is consistent 60 fps when in your combat, after it it will go back again to 50s. The fast combat is important to be consistent 60 fps dude. Go back to your counting sandwiches in 30fps. XD You cant bring a great game down. It's funny you mention eurogamer score while DF praise the game.

[maniacmayhem]

Combat is 60 fps with the resolution dropping to 720p, what's the point of fast combat when the game looks like it's being played on an Atari Jaguar?

I'll take those sandwiches in constant 30fps/4k please.

*It's funny you mention eurogamer score while DF praise the game.*

Where did I mention the score?

[Lightning77]

So it's ok to pick and choose where the 60 FPS matters? The way Square has been talking up PS5 there shouldn't be any issue's right? It should be 60fps across the board. Hell it should be 4k 60 the way Square has been promoting the PS5.

I'm not taking anything away from the game it's getting crazy by good scores every where. Even with these inconsistencies you're right ppl are
having a blast regardless. The way ppl were going off on SF making it sound like nobody will have fun 0/10 because of some frames now.

You need to share that same energy instead of it works good hear but not so good there.

[--Onilink--]

Why cherry pick the framerate outside of combat to the brief moments it went to 50s when the video itself shows plenty of times the game goes to low 40s and even 30s?

Also, dropping quality to guarantee 60 in combat is a good idea, but having to drop already compromised graphics to 720p to achieve it is pretty baffling.

You can still love a game AND ask for better quality/performance from a developer

[shinoff2183]

Maniac

Atari jaguar. Over exergate much.

Personally I always play games on quality mode when given the option. So not a huge deal to me just like I don't think starfield 30fps is a big deal. Some of yall real spoiled sounding.

[KingKionic]

Hold on here.... the resolution is 720p during combat and its still has issues for 60 FPS?

Just lock it at 30 fps square and stop playing games.

Ridiculous they even considered this weird performance trade off.

[Tacoboto]

720p 60fps - it's almost like we're talking about the Series S! Or the Switch, that maintains a full 1080p60fps with 8 local players on Smash Bros.

This isn't even Open World either. Wow.

[KingKionic]

Even the environment now looking at the screenshot... its definitely using baked lighting. No Realtime Global Illumination in game is another knock on them. They couldnt even pull that card.

Laughable.

[Tacoboto]

Unstable 60fps 🤣

[Crows90]

Absolutely right! Finally some sense. Or at least half of it. The game doesn't look out of this world...why can't it manage 60fps at a higher resolution? Devil may cry 4 anyone?

Optimization is key here. While you ask for things to be dumbed down in order to excuse another game ..i say let's ask for that optimization to elevate games.

[shinoff2183]

Relax orchard.

[pitythefool]

The Xbox guy hard on for 30 fps is comical at this point, it was you guys that made a massive song and dance about frame rate being king last gen, boasted about how many games the SX supported at 120fps.

That’s why you were getting teased over Star Field.

[KingKionic]

After FF16 being 720p i think its about time everyone have a seat with the Starfield outrage.

This is quite pathetic.

[Greg2801]

Its only in battles in the performance mode, but atleast they gave the players an option to play in 60 fps unlike starfield...

[pitythefool]

Again the “outrage” was direct response to the flip flopping over frame rate from a certain fan base.

Spent an entire generation poking fun at 30fps cinematic games only to gladly accept that when the worlds most powerful console had to go there.

Despite performance mode needing work
Square still managed a mode that’s “as close to flawless as we’ve seen in a long time”- Digital Foundry.

At least the options there if folks want the trade off, still better than take it or leave it.

[Crows90]

Nah...it's not game a vs game b. It's about being consistent.

4k/60fps has always been a pipe dream. I only remember one base going crazy about it last gen.

[Lightning77]

Hold on wait what?

"Spent an entire generation poking fun at 30fps cinematic games only to gladly accept that when the worlds most powerful console had to go there."

So this is clearly a made up narrative flat out. Are you saying xbox fans last gen poked fun at 30 fps a console that's weaker than PS4 for starters. A console that hit the same exact 30 fps as the PS4?

Please tell more lol.

[pitythefool]

Yes they made fun of games being 30fps simply to make it more cinematic and are now accepting 30fps as being a design choice.

Both are gibberish reasons.

[Lightning77]

"Yes they made fun of games being 30fps simply to make it more cinematic and are now accepting 30fps as being a design choice."

I've never seen X fans making fun of PS over 30fps. Do you have links? Again How can Xbox fans make fun of PS fans for having the exact same 30 fps on Xbox?

[pitythefool]

No not the 30fps on its own, the reason behind it, to make it more cinematic and now accepting another poor reason, being a design choice.

[P_Bomb]

I’m still going to play in performance mode. So for me this changes nothing. I want the option.

[nickanasty206]

This video was enough evidence for me to wait and buy on PC. Dropping down to 720p and upscaling that to 4k is going to look terrible on a 4k screen. I guess best motto to live by since as gamers we seem to be beta testers this day and age is "Good things come to those who wait". And I shall wait.

Going to be interesting to see the follow up article released where Square Enix complains once again that the game didn't meet sales expectations as they've done time and time again.

[Elda]

Play the demo. It looks great on a huge 4k hdr tv. When the full retail game releases it'll look even better.

[Snookies12]

Nah, as someone that watched my buddy play through the whole demo on performance mode. It still looks great in battles on a 70" 4k screen. Never would have known it's upscaled from 720p in battles, if it wasn't mentioned at this point.

[Hereandthere]

It looks great on my cheap wal mart 65 inch 4k onn tv that i paid 228.88 for on black friday a few years back.

[gleepot]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm nope

[Snookies12]

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm yep

[Woofie]

Runs at a solid 30fps

At least they offer a 60fps mode, unlike some other games I know

[PhillyDonJawn]

Never thought I'd see 720p again in 2023 😕 and it's still dropping below 60fps? It' don't have super graphics and it's not open world....not acceptable.

[GameBoyColor]

Everyone was so unsure of this game but I knew Yoshi and his team wouldnt fail to deliver. So glad they are finally getting the props they deserve since so many people ignored XIV because it was a mmo

[The3faces]

720p performance mode can't maintain 60fps and quality mode dips to 1080p and this game isn't open world. 🥺

[Hereandthere]

At least there's a performance mode, unlike the 12tf FLOP monster, Final Fantasy at that res looks better than any xbox series exclusive to date by a long mile. If they did not say what the res was, you would not notice.

[NatsuXTheMaxspeed21]

facts

[talocaca]

I was impressed by the demo. Gorgeous character models, zero load times and a very polished experience overall.

As a casual FF fan, I bought it after seeing the reviews.

[SPEAKxTHExTRUTH]

The 60 fps mode is pretty bad but other than that the game is excellent.

[BriBri]

Probably in the minority here but the demo turned me off completely, especially the terrible walk and run animations for the main character, I felt like I was skating around on ice the whole time. Clive 's centre of rotation seem to be about half a metre behind him and it's massively off putting for me.

The English voice acting is a total cringe fest too, I'd rather play in Japanese voices but then your have to try to read all the subtitles for the villager NPCs and that's just a pain in the ass!

Visually though I thought it looked pretty good and had no complaints on a 60inch high end 4k TV.

[KillaJamm]

Damn that performance mode though, 720p, definitely quality mode for me then.