We Play, You Play: Final Fantasy XVI

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Anyone need anything before this record gets started?

No, I think I'm good to go.

Actually,

do you, Nick, would you mind handing me my water bottle?

It's kind of over on your side of the table.

Oh, yeah, this one.

Yeah, the yellow one.

Yeah, there you go.

Thanks, buddy.

What was that?

Was that a fucking side quest?

It really appreciates.

Did I just complete a side quest?

I really appreciate it.

I'm thirsty, and this is going to quench my thirst.

Wait.

Wow, okay.

I guess I could use this.

Can I do one?

I want to do one.

Does anybody need something?

I guess.

Can you do one?

I guess.

Hey, actually, Matt, I do need your help with something.

Okay, sure.

I took a few notes on

this game for our record, and I'm wondering if you can...

Can you just hand me my notepad?

It's right there.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Here you go.

wow

we got good job

i i guess should i should i say if it works the other way uh

hey heather actually i was like

i'm having trouble connecting to the wi-fi locally can you just can you just get on your phone and like just share the password with yeah here you go buddy

wait

here you go buddy

hey thanks wait but i didn't get anything from that.

Like, I didn't,

that wasn't a sign.

You just made me do something for no experience and no gill.

Like, I've just like gave you.

Oh, the sound effect didn't play?

You didn't get excited.

You didn't get experience.

No, I didn't get shit.

I just handed you a password.

All right.

Try it.

Try a different one.

Well, I still will.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

Give me the password back.

I know what.

I only.

All right, fine.

All right.

Fine.

I'll delete the password from my wife.

Let's try it again.

Here you go.

No, I'll share it with you, Nick.

Here you go.

Okay.

Wow.

Thanks for the experience and the gill.

You're welcome.

What the fuck is this?

What?

Wait, so you guys can take side quests from me and get experience, and you can give each other experience and side quests, but I don't get any experience or side quests from either of you.

Matt, can I do one for you?

Here, here, here.

Have my sandwich.

Have my sandwich.

Oh, thanks.

That was a good sandwich.

What?

You just fucking, you ate it.

Hey, you ate it.

Jesus Christ, you folded that thing.

I'm hungry.

Also, I didn't get any fucking, I didn't get anything.

Hand me that.

It's like you were smuggling a condom into prison.

Just fucking

find a way to get these condoms into prison.

Hand me that paperclip.

Hand me that paperclip.

Hand me the paperclip.

Just hand me the paperclip.

Okay, here.

Okay, great.

So that's a side quest.

So we know the paperclip is active.

So I'm going to hand it back to you and see if if I get an XP.

Someone,

no, you have to.

I'll take the paperclip.

Yeah, okay, great.

Here, here you go, Nick.

Fucking nothing, man.

Nothing.

What level are you?

Hey, Matt, you want this paperclip?

Oh, sure.

Yeah, actually, I've been looking for something like that.

Damn it.

What the fuck?

What level are you guys?

Three.

100.

We pet our good boy Torgill and say, fuck, as we play, you play Final Fantasy 16 this week on Get Played.

Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between.

It's time to get played.

I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger.

Oh, that's me, Nick Weiger, and I'm here with our third host, Matt Apodaka.

Hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Premiere Video Game Podcast, where this week we are talking about

Final Fantasy 16, the We Play, you play

of this month,

Year of Our Lord 2023.

What is it?

Is it August?

What are we?

July?

This is the end of July.

Last year, July, this is released.

I don't know what's going on in Amsterdam, but over here in the U.S.,

it's the end of July.

I think it'll still release.

This episode will still release at the end of July Amsterdam time.

I don't think you're that far ahead.

No, yeah,

does it arrive?

Yeah, I'm sure.

I trust you guys.

I've seen the next one.

What is our episode?

I've seen the next United States presidential election, so I don't know how far ahead that puts me.

Well, that's at least

well, hmm.

Let me just say I hope I'm certain someone's getting a second term.

I won't say who.

So

yes, yes, this is our we play.

You play for people who are new to the podcast.

What we are going to, what this format is, is each month we spend the whole time, the whole episode, talking about one game in depth.

And sometimes it's the big new AAA release that everyone's talking about and we're all playing.

And sometimes it's a, you know, game from years past that we just want to break down in granular detail.

But today it's Final Fantasy 16.

Yeah, this time we're playing the sixth Final Fantasy to have released in the 2000s.

Wow.

Which is

fucking grim.

It's grim.

That's not that grim.

It's we're 23 years in.

What do you want?

You want the better?

You want no, you want like four Final Fantasies over there?

I want them on a FIFA schedule, babe.

I want one a year.

How many were released from the beginning of Final Fantasy until the year 2000?

That's how many I want

that number.

Before that, 10.

Yeah, it was 10.

Oh, you want, so you're upset about the, the, not the,

you think it's a slit's too slow of a pace.

You're not like, so many years have passed, and we can count how many years have gone by, have, have,

you know, how, how much of our life has passed us by by the number of fantasy Final Fantasies released.

You're making the opposite argument.

Yeah, I want, I want more Final Fantasies, potentially less big.

Maybe, maybe, maybe we can do more seven, eight, and nine-sized video games, which all came out within a five-year period in the 90s.

Yeah, but those were big boys.

I remember the state taking a while to beat.

Maybe I'm misremembering it because I was younger.

So wait, what you're saying is that the size of the game doesn't affect, so then what, what, why haven't they, where are, we're missing four games.

Here's what what I'm saying.

It's the production values are what take all the time.

It's like, it's so, it's just, you know, it's like, so you, okay, so you,

I see what you mean.

Because in 1996, Final Fantasy VII had low production values.

No, it looked fucking, these games looked fucking incredible for the time.

But I'm saying, like, just like,

because you need much bigger teams because you have to have much more detailed character models and environments, and you have to have fully spoken dialogue and all that shit.

Yes.

Yeah, I totally am on, I'm on your side here, Nick.

That's why historically we know that Final Fantasy VII wasn't the most expensive video game ever made.

No, it was.

I'm saying, but even the most expensive game ever made in 1996

is on a completely different scale from the median game made in 2023.

I think I see what's going on here.

I think because Heather's in Amsterdam,

the Zoom delay is just like a little different.

So like, it's just like, it's not that you guys are just like a second off.

It's that there's like a thing happening where you guys are just missing each other's points completely.

I see it.

I see it.

I agree.

And I think they should just reuse assets from all 16 Final Fantasy games and just put a new one out next year.

Who cares?

Look, the tools are going to be a good thing.

Honestly,

that would do really good business, too.

Yeah.

And the tools have gotten such that the other side of this, that now you can play a game like Chained Echoes, which came out last year and which is delightful.

And that feels like a, you know, that feels like a prestige

16-bit JRPG, but it was made by like a one-person team.

So like that's the other side of it.

So

yeah, I don't know.

You know what?

It'd be cool.

Not to get into Final Man 16 quite yet, but like...

You know how you go to with like when you save your game, you get

a sprite version of your party in the save game.

That is the kind of thing.

And the same thing with Dragon Quest XI, where you can toggle back and forth between the in the in the

re-release, where you toggle back and forth between the 2D and the 3D presentation.

It's just kind of like, oh, yeah, I wouldn't mind.

Like, if they did, they would never do this, but they're just like, our next Final Fantasy is just going to be like a total throwback aesthetic.

There was a fascinating Final Fantasy 15

because

the world of Final Fantasy XV was expansive.

Like

there were movies,

multiple

secondary chapters that were DLC, but there was also a mobile game which remade the entire game in Chibi graphics.

So you could play Final Fantasy XV on your phone, hit all the story beats, and the characters would look like Funko Pops.

I mean, let's not compare Chibi to Funko Pops.

That's unfair to Chibi.

These ones, you have to see these.

Do they look just like Funko Pops?

I mean, it's pretty close.

Okay.

They're charming.

It's cute.

It's nice that they did that for you because you could also play that one on Switch.

So that's for people that don't have the

more powerful hardware.

They should do that for The Last of Us.

Honestly.

My first thought was Death Stranding.

Like a chibi Sam Porter Bridges, I would actually really like.

I think that would be on brand for Death Stranding.

Yeah, that would work.

That would totally work.

I would love it if there was a Last of Us for Switch in this Funko Pop Chibi style and that they pitched up the voices just a little bit.

So

it'd be like,

hey, Ellie.

Any of your comic books you've been looking for?

There is a,

I pulled up this article here because I've been seeing this pop up, uh, just like on my newsfeed.

The Switch has its own dollar store Last of Us knockoff, and it's called The Last Hope.

Oh, yes, people wanted us to cover this for our game slot format where we talk about shitty games.

I mean, apparently, this sucks.

Well,

I thought about it, and I was also like, Do we want to do this?

Do you want to make ourselves play the Switch Last of Us clone?

I'll tell you my answer.

No, I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that either.

Everything that

anybody listening wants to do that would be bad i don't want to do it

what we could do is you know mary is such a huge fan of the last of us

and she has her switch here we could prank her and be like hey there's like a last of us game that came up with a switch

and then just let her play it and come on the show it would be really funny to prank someone you love so much uh with a really bad thing instead of having her come on to do the one thing that she's requested to do a lot, which is her mics, by the biker mice from Mars.

Biker mice from Mars.

I have a little bit more experience having a wife, and I would advise you not to break her wife.

I know this new wife thing is like new to you, Heather.

Yeah, don't do that.

Okay, okay, got it.

So you're saying that Final Fantasy VII was a small team for its time.

No, it was no.

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Oh, we have a lot to talk about.

We have a lot to do.

We have a lot of game.

We have a lot of FF16 to get into.

I mean,

we didn't discuss this beforehand.

Do we have any other games to talk about?

Or should we just dive in?

I don't want to break format too much.

Well, I would love to, if we don't have a what are we playing right now, I would love to share a World Warrior snippet from the last week or so.

I think that would be kind of neat.

Well, Matt, you have anything to talk about?

Because I have something I could talk about, but also we don't.

I'm just saying, like.

I don't want to.

If we're going to, if we all have something to say for what are you playing, we can do what are you playing.

But if, but if we've all been playing Final Fantasy 16, we just want to get a game.

This is not a what are you playing?

I know, but this could slot into the what are you playing slot.

What are you saying here, mate?

Let's do World War II.

Final Fantasy VII had a small team for the time.

The only update that I have

is it's small.

It's not even like, I don't even know if it's worth advancement.

We'll talk about it.

We'll talk about it next week.

We'll talk about what are you playing?

I don't know why.

What are you playing?

Hey, I got it.

Hey, what's going on?

I urged you to segment intro, so here I am.

No, we were just saying.

We were just saying we're not going to do it this week because we have a big game to talk about.

I was maybe going to cut that.

And then now that you're here, I feel like I have to use you.

Now we're obligated.

I got to use you.

Because we have to pay you.

Hey, there's nothing wrong with padding an episode, especially when you have so much to talk about.

No, that's actually nothing

makes it worse.

I'll just say really quick,

I'll get you, I'll just do it.

Yeah, you're right, man.

What are you playing?

I'm playing Final Fantasy IV

and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Hell yeah.

Where are you at?

What just happened?

I just got the monk character.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

So I'm pretty early on still.

But I really like him.

I can't remember what his name is off the dome right now.

But the things I like about it so far is that

I didn't hate the job system in 3.

I like having to pick jobs, but I like that every character has their own thing and their name.

I don't care about naming characters.

So they just have their own identities, which is cool.

I think that's the first in this series to have that so far.

And I like everybody's looks.

Everybody looks really cool.

And yeah, everybody's individual powers are neat.

The one thing I don't like is like the charge.

I don't know if you've experienced it, if you guys have played four.

Yeah, I played the shit out of four.

I don't like the charge aspect of battling.

Like, you have to, like, there's like a charge meter.

You mean the active, the sort of like active time battle thing, the whole, the way the whole system works?

Well, not really.

Like, this one feels a little different.

Like, cause I, to me, like, active time battle is like

or turn-based, I guess, is what I'm thinking.

But, like, I guess maybe this is a little different.

Like, there's like a little charge meter in between.

Maybe it is like a slight difference.

I feel like, at least with a turn-based thing, it's like, okay, it's your turn to attack now.

Blah, blah, blah.

You can go.

Active time, they're attacking me while I'm still charging up.

And I'm like, okay, well, it's not even your turn yet.

I'm waiting.

I can't even do anything.

Yeah.

So, this, no, this was a this was a design choice.

I mean, this is like the whole thing.

I like I actually

like it, and it's a thing that's you know,

it's

I think what's, I think I like like, like, because turns are not based purely on sequence.

It's not like, okay, each, each one goes in this exact same order each round.

It's like you like, it's, it's based on, you know, attributes of those individual characters, your, your party members and, and the enemies.

And so it kind of like, I don't know, it adds a little bit of.

It adds a little bit of action, a little bit of, of, of,

uh, tactical decision making, yeah, you know, in terms of like how you're going to pace things out, in terms of how you're going to order your attacks.

But I'm sorry, you're talking about your opinion, your take on it.

I don't need to be defensive of this.

No, no, no, it's okay that you like it.

No,

here's the thing about it: it's new to me in the series so far, so I haven't experienced it that much.

It's very possible that it can grow on me and that I will change my mind.

Um, because I, uh, so far, otherwise, I'm really enjoying it.

Uh, and I am excited to.

I've like gone full,

I basically have every Final Fantasy game loaded on my Switch that is playable on Switch, except for the mobile 15, because I'll play 15 on my PS5.

So I have 1 through 6 on the cartridge.

I have 7, 8, and 9.

They have all been on sale recently.

So I'm going to do this.

Wow.

You're going to play 12?

I'm going to play 12 Zodiac Age.

Yeah, I plan to do it.

I plan to play 10 and 10-2.

My friend.

And then I've been seeing people in the Discord.

I've been seeing people on the Discord say,

play 14

because 16 and 14 have some similarities.

And maybe when I'm done with all of them, I'll finally dip my toes into 14.

Because if I get into 14 now,

it's over.

That's been my whole issue.

I just like, we need to start playing 14.

I'm not going to play anything else.

You and I have dabbled in 14, haven't we?

Yeah, but I've never

got thoroughly deep.

I never got super deep into it.

I'll let you know when I do it.

And if you guys want to come with me, you can.

Hmm.

It's just like these things, anytime I play them in MMO, it takes over my life.

Yeah.

It's just like I kind of leaked me to just not do it.

I, what else have you got right now?

Literally.

I don't know.

This podcast.

We could play it while we were working every week.

I guess we could.

11 took so much from me.

That sounds bad.

So much.

I don't want to do it anymore.

Never mind.

What about you guys?

I did go longer than I thought.

Well, I also interrupted you.

But if the active time battle is rubbing you right now, because that's like a system that's present, I think, in all of them up through nine.

So just, you know, just be ready.

I'm ready.

I'm committing to doing this.

And

I don't think that's not enough of a thing to dislike for me to completely fall off.

So that's, I'm fine.

I'm okay.

Uh, I'll talk real quick, which is just I'll touch on Diablo 4.

Season one started this between the last record and this episode's release.

I know that we've had, it started before our last episode released, but we recorded before that it started.

Here's the thing.

I mean, based on my experience with it, I'm, and I want to be clear here, I'm not complaining.

It's difficult to launch a game with a scale.

It's difficult to, you know, what are you doing season one?

This is like the kind of thing of like you're going to figure out what's working and what's not, and you're going to iterate on it.

But I'm just going to wait for season two.

Uh, because there are things like, so first off, you can't use your existing character to access the new content, you have to start a new like seasonal character, which is a little bit disorienting.

I understand it, I know that's that's a thing with a lot of these season-based games.

I want to say that was even the case with

three, but maybe I'm misremembering it.

Um, you know, the mounts are still not super fun.

I think they're going to figure that they're going to maybe simplify that or something.

Again, I trust these teams to figure it out.

And then the big thing is just navigation.

I think that's the main issue with it right now.

It's just like there's this pin system that doesn't really work.

You end up kind of buried in your mini map a lot.

You're tabbing in and out of it, or you're just looking at the little corner of your screen that shows you where you're supposed to go because it is such a game based on like, hey, going to this waypoint to achieve this particular objective.

And so I think they're, I don't know what they're going to, I don't know if they're going to go back to like the, the, the old school style map overlay where it's just over basically your, your play space.

They've been trying to avoid that or been saying it's, it's technically difficult for whatever reason.

But, you know,

I think just some adjustments.

some balance tweaks, some adjustments, some quality of life things all need to be integrated for me to

spend more time with this.

I'm glad I played through the initial, I'm glad I played the campaign effectively single player.

I had a lot of fun with it, and I'm sure at some point in the future, I will return to it.

But that's my experience with season one.

I think that mirrors the consensus.

Heather, you have a World Warrior segment.

Yeah, it's time for Heather Ann Campbell World Warrior.

Our international segment.

And

this week, I've got a anecdote from a Polish listener whose name is, and I hope I say this pronunciation correctly:

Jarosław

and, or Jarosław, Yarosław?

That could be it.

And

they sent this

audio clip,

which is from the Dendi,

a series of home video game consoles and unofficial hardware clones of Nintendo's third-generation Famicom.

This was a

device sold mostly in Russia and post-Soviet countries.

And I heard in Soviet Russia, Famicom plays you.

Oh my God.

That's actually really tough.

Anyway, Matt, you want to play this?

This is apparently a menu from

9999 games in one

system

wow and uh this was like the the menu select that would allow you to choose from these these 9 000 games

My favorite there's only three comments on this video One of them is like, you know, holy shit

What is it?

It's bruh, I have tears in my eyes.

Are you kidding me?

Oh my god.

Because I think that there were kids who played this

and you know

don't see it lionized like other uh game systems.

Yeah.

But then one of the other comments is in

uh

in I believe Russian,

and depending on where you translate it, it's either just a buzz, childhood spent dancing, or

just bliss, spent my childhood with tanks.

Uh wow.

Anyway, I want to read this

anecdote that he shared, so you can tune this down.

First things first, the fall of communism in 1989 had a huge impact on what media I consumed as someone born in 1990.

The peculiar thing of being a 90s kid in Poland was that you were actually an 80s kid at the same time due to the flood of Western media from the 80s and 90s caused by the aforementioned end of communism.

Hence, Polish children born in the 90s were usually fans of both 80s series like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or DuckTales, as well as 90s staples like Power Rangers.

Video game consoles seen in the 90s were almost non-existent, except for one particular platform.

Yes, we had Atari 2600, 7800 Lynx, Sega Master System, and Amiga had official releases in

Poland, but most were completely unavailable.

So we had the so-called Pegasus, which was a clone of the Japanese Famicom.

Since there was no copyright law in Poland until 1994, the company that owned Pegasus was able to sell Famicom games without any licenses.

Pegasus was extremely popular in Poland due to the fact that its counterfeits were readily available on marketplaces.

Apparently, they later tried to sell Super Pegasus, Pegasus Game Boy, as well as Power Pegasus, which was a clone of the Sega Mega Drive, but without much success.

I've never encountered any of them.

Speaking from my personal experience, I've had one of the Pegasus fakes in 1993.

The unofficial cartridges were available via our local market and cost the equivalent of $2,

a quarter to trade one of the previously bought ones.

One of my early childhood memories is a menu for the aforementioned 9,999 games in one cartridge.

as such collections that actually had a maximum of 10 games were the most common ones.

I never had a Super NES or Nintendo 64, as there was no official Nintendo presence until much, much later in Poland.

Sometime later, I got a classic Game Boy with Metroid 2 and a boy in his blob from an uncle who had gotten it from a friend who had imported it from the USA, but it was broken and simply impossible to get the parts in Poland, so I never got to play it.

My next Nintendo console was a beautiful purple translucent Game Boy color from the same uncle who bought it from me during his trip to the USA.

GameCube had virtually no presence in Poland.

Wii and DS could be bought via online stores, but only around the release of the Wii and 3DS, of the Wii U and 3DS, did Nintendo products actually start appearing in stores due to a Czech company who became a sole Nintendo distributor in Poland.

Can you,

as an aside, that's recent.

Yeah.

Nowadays, it's more or less the same as in other countries, but the market prices seem not to be adjusted to the actual wages, and therefore it's more expensive to be a Nintendo fan here than, say, in the USA.

Due to our history with the unavailability of video game consoles, PC has been the most popular platform for gaming throughout the years, with Sony consoles quite a distance behind them.

As with your experience in Amsterdam, Xbox is not doing that well, but it never actually did.

So, that was from again, I think that's

Yaroslav is my guess.

He provided me with a pronunciation, and I'll be damned damned if the pronunciation also makes any sense.

I'll be damned.

I'll be damned.

It's a lot of Final Fantasy.

I hear like talking like that a lot lately.

I'll be damned.

Like that sort of thing.

But anyway, I didn't know any of this and it was so fucking cool to read it.

Yeah, that's awesome.

That's great context.

Like it's, it's,

we talk, I mean,

I know that when I lived here previously, it was harder to come by video games, but

Amsterdam.

Yeah, here in Amsterdam.

Not wherever it is.

It was harder to hear the podcast listener.

I am, I'm living in your trunk, listener.

But now it's, it's, it doesn't, like, as I mentioned, you can go into a store and there's stacks of PS5s here.

So it's very, very different.

I also pointed out to you guys earlier on text that there is a GameCube only store here in Amsterdam.

Which is right.

Baffling to me.

Like,

not a good idea in the early 2000s, even.

Do it now.

It's bold.

They sell retro refurbished systems, games,

like maybe it's, maybe it's a smash thing.

I don't know.

But anyway,

thank you so much for messaging me.

here

as we continue our journey into the European market with get played.

I said that I would have a date for a Get Played Euro get together.

I don't have that date yet, but I will announce it on our official Twitter, which is at get played.

Oh, fucking hell.

It's X.

We'll put it on the show's X.

It's X now.

We'll put it on X.

But it'll also be, I'll repost it on my own X account.

You'll zeit it, I think is

what it is.

Jesus Christ.

Zeet it.

And it'll also be on Blue Sky Threads and Instagram.

So,

and our Discord, our Discord.

Hey, there you go.

Yeah, it'll be on the Discord.

Discord, good.

But it'll be happening sometime in August.

So I'm really excited to meet and hang out with you guys.

I really appreciate that

email you sent in, Jaroslav.

I apologize if I'm butchering your name uh but i that that because the only thing i really know about the polish gaming scene is cd project red and you know their origin alone is kind of fascinating where they began as a cd-rom distributor like they start they they and then they got in they parlayed that success into developing software which is kind of amazing that they were their whole thing was like you know importing like Baldur's Gate for PC and and and you know pressing that to CD for that market and then there's like, hey, well, you know, we're making good money from this.

Why don't we make our own games?

And they make the fucking Witcher franchise.

And it's,

but yeah, all that, all that stuff is really cool.

And I'm glad that, hey, it fucking rocks that everyone, that most of the world now has its own gaming scene and its own development scene.

Yeah, we're living in a really beautiful era of video games here in the end of days.

It's great.

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Eastern Time.

Ah, hey, speaking of this era of video games, it's time for our We Play You Play for Final Fantasy 16.

Final Fantasy 16, we talked about Final Fantasy XIV earlier, has a lot of Final Fantasy XIV

staff as part of its credits.

Chiefly its producer, Naoki Yoshida, main director Hoshi Takai, creative director and the writer of this game, Katsutoyo Mihiro, and the localization director, and this is a big role, I think, for our experience, is Michael Christopher Koji Fox, who has been with Square NX4

and with the Final Fantasy team for like 20 years.

years now.

Also, I should shout out the composer, Masayoshi Soken, because this is a really good score.

And I think this is also something that a lot of people have had a positive reaction to from this game.

I mean, I don't know.

I want to not dominate this discussion

because I know based on your hours, everyone's reported I played this game the least of the three of us.

Matt, you have finished this game.

Yeah.

Yeah, I got 64 hours logged on this bad boy.

And

it's the first

modern Final Fantasy game that I've beaten.

I have

previously taken down one and two, three on the DS, and now three in the Pixel Remaster as well.

Um,

and then now and 16, and that's it.

Those are the only Final Fantasy games that I've uh completed.

Uh, and I mean,

I talked about this a little bit, you know, leading up to this record.

Like, something happened to me.

Like, I don't know.

I think maybe, like,

my gaming muscles were just, like, ready to go after Tears of the Kingdom.

I just had played a big game.

So maybe I was in a better place to take down such a big game like this.

But I also think.

This Final Fantasy game is more designed for me and the games that I like to play in general.

Because it's a single character story

action game.

It's a character action game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's my shit.

I love that.

Like, I don't know.

Like, so it was just,

I couldn't, I couldn't put it down.

I couldn't pull myself away from it.

I said out loud to my girlfriend, I think I'm addicted to this video game.

And she said,

yeah, I know.

Yeah, no shit, idiot.

Yeah, it's all you do.

It's all you talk about.

But I, yeah, I

immediately was like, do I start a

new game plus?

I don't know if I'm going to do that right now.

And then no sooner did I say that to you guys, I did start one.

Wow.

But I haven't picked it up since

last week because I know that there's just other things that I want to be doing.

And maybe I'll do

a new game plus.

Because I want to build the Ultima weapon.

But anyway, well, that's like a whole, that's a whole other part of the discussion.

But Heather, what about where'd you, where did you guys get to?

I guess we can just, you know, or how long.

You played the least, Nick.

Yeah, I'm about 15 hours.

Yeah, that's like,

which is, yeah, but it's like, it's...

It's, you know, it's, it's not nothing for committing your like hours of your life to a task.

But in terms of like tackling this game, in particular, Final Fantasy game, I feel like I've, you you know, I've got a lot to go.

Uh, but Heather, how about you?

Um, I

am about 36 hours into the game,

uh, which

my PlayStation menu tells me is 63% finished,

um,

which tracks with your total playtime, Matt.

Uh, I don't know how we

there are so many spoilers in a game like this,

anything you talk about the story is going to be spoiling that story for somebody.

Well, we can stay out of, we can stay out of spoiler country, uh, yee-haw, for the

first part of the episode, and we can talk.

There's a lot to talk about in terms of systems and progression and so on.

I'm going to lead off with something

that's a take.

I don't like this game as much as other Final Fantasy games.

And the reason being

is that it's not weird.

You don't think this game is weird?

I don't.

No, I don't.

Like,

when I think about Final Fantasy games, for me, they are so weird.

They are so quirky and specific and kind of playful.

And I think that that is all the way through Final Fantasy 15,

which is about,

you know, the four four bros who go on a road trip, and it's like, oh, this is like some kind of fever dream mishmash of American Southwest and high fantasy with like crazy vistas and technology, and then also cars and clothing that seem to be designed by Louboutin and Rolls-Royce.

Like it is a very weird mashup.

And then

additionally to that, you have layers of the game that are like

the official Coleman brand is in the game and Cup Noodles is in the game.

Like it is a very weird game.

And then the other, the mainline game that came before that, Final Fantasy 13,

starred a character who had a chocobo living in his afro.

Like it's...

It's they're weird worlds.

And this feels like a traditional fantasy.

It feels a lot to me like these

Stormlight archive books that I'm reading by Brandon Sanderson.

They're like big fantasy stories that feel kind of familiar and have like that sort of political intrigue and the,

you know, the

long dead gods and like all that stuff that you find in a lot of Western fantasy.

So

I also think that the success of the game, because it has been massively successful, like it is hugely successful.

Yes.

Is

means that all of these choices were calculated and were an attempt to make a very successful Final Fantasy game.

And it was, and they succeeded.

It was.

So

the game director, and

this is in a GameStop profile, but the game director uh who I mentioned earlier, uh uh uh Hiroshi Takai, is like a huge fan of

got the God of War franchise and specifically modeled a lot of this off of God of War.

Like that was part of the the design approach.

And you can feel that.

Yeah, you definitely can.

So here's the thing.

Part of the reason I played this game the least of any of us is because I was initially extremely enthusiastic about it.

I love the presentation.

I really like the world.

I think the combat, and I still really love the combat, is an absolute hoot.

It's really just super refined and well implemented.

It has an incredible flow to it.

As I played it more, my enthusiasm waned.

And coming into this episode, I was a little worried this was going to be a two-on-one with the two of you like having a lot of enthusiasm for this game.

And maybe I'm one over, maybe by that, you know, honestly, that was my hope.

I was like, maybe after this episode, I'll hear both of you two raving about this game, and I'll be like, yeah, I'll give it

the second chance.

I'll see this thing through to the end.

But now I'm realizing it's a two-on-one with me and Heather against Matt.

So the tables have turned.

Here's the thing.

So now you're with now you're like, now I feel good because I'm winning.

Yeah.

Well, and here's the thing.

No, I mean, I don't.

I want to hear, keep, keep going, please.

I was going to say, like, I don't

give a flying fuck what you think about this game.

No,

I'm not on

defense for liking it or finishing it.

Like, if you guys, because there are things in it that I don't like.

For example,

Heather called out that it's

a pretty traditional Western fantasy story, and it really is.

specifically because there are only white people in this game.

That's crazy.

That is so crazy.

In like a game where you could put anything in it.

It's like you could just not have it only be white people.

It's also counter to what, you know, as I was saying, it's counter to conventions that have been established in Final Fantasy canon in the past.

Like you're playing Final Fantasy 4 right now.

That's very much not the case with that game.

No, not at all.

But,

you know, like, like, again, if you're, if, uh, if they're going for a super traditional, I don't want to make this argument defending you, but like, like, they clearly had a calculation to be like, this is going to be a super traditional high fantasy modeled off of lord of the rings modeled off of uh you know which has an exclusively white cast a game of thrones which has an almost you know a mostly white white cast it's like clearly they they'd modeled it off of western fantasy which establishes that temple absolutely and and it's coming from a japanese team so like culturally it's like a little bit you know i mean like all this shit is like there's a i don't know i think it's a little bit more complicated than

uh than the optics of it but i i agree it's not great it's not ideal yeah and i will say there are stretches in the game, in like in like probably around where Heather's at, maybe like right before that,

where you're sort of just kind of going through it.

Or at least I felt like I was just like, I just have to get to the end of this.

By the time I had put like 40 hours in,

I was like, I have, this has to be over.

I have to be done with this.

Like, not because I wasn't necessarily enjoying like the combat or like the story of it all, but I was just sort of like, I'm done.

Like,

I've played enough of this where I, if this was over right now, I would be fine.

Um,

because I think the story has

the story has um waves to it, where some of the story I'm pretty interested in, and I want to know what's going on, and then the rest of it, I'm sort of like, Well, I know this, or like, I'm, I, you know, more of this, this is what we're still doing.

Like, we're still on this part of it, we're in this part for a while.

The end, I will say,

I think is worth getting to.

Like, it's like, okay,

all right, that's an endorsement.

The end is great, and I think the final big set piece, the final, like,

is

one of the most fun parts of the game.

I, like, I was, there's like one,

like,

icon fight that I think is better than everything in the game,

but

I think the end is worth it, and I think the end is good.

Well, I'm not, I'm not going to quit the game.

Okay.

Like, I

might quit the game, but keep going.

Final Fantasy games have been

so much a part of my

conscious pop culture experience

that

I feel like I owe it to the game to finish it.

And it is really bittersweet because it takes so fucking long for these games to come out.

And, you know, as I've said on the show before, I fucking platinumed 15.

Yes.

Like, I loved 15.

And I know that it was not a hugely

like even in Final Fantasy fans,

like in your backpack of games, a lot of people aren't going to put 15 in that backpack.

But I was like, fuck this.

I mean, this totally has its hooks in me.

And there's nothing in 16 which is

sinking its teeth into me it's not weird enough the relationships aren't like dynamic enough like the the four boys in 15

you love those boys like you love the way they relate to each other like you love the way that they physically interact with each other on the battlefield like there's a lot of like

there's a lot of like when

prompto does something and he falls down doing it, and another character comes over and like helps him up, and then they high five and then they get back into the fight, and that's all like animation that is dynamic and isn't scripted.

Like, there's such an aggressive animation engine in the uh in the fighting in 15 between the guys.

And in this,

I'll have party members, and they might as well not even be in the party like clive is just wrecking fucking house and everything on the screen is

like lightning and fire effects um

or you know fucking smoke

i don't want to i don't want to

i don't want to spoil something don't spoil anything don't spoil well staying out of spoiler country okay i don't know is is a power a spoiler

Is icon attack a spoiler?

Yes.

I just feel like I really got to say it.

No, you can't say it.

First off, I don't even know what you're saying.

So with 36 hours into the game,

our listeners may not know what you're saying.

I'm sure a lot of our listeners have finished this,

but also we have listeners who don't even play the game.

So we were covering

every demographic will be covered by people who are listening to the podcast.

Can I cryptically say this?

Yes.

If you know me

and you know the stuff that I like,

you know that there's one

that I love.

And that's all I'll say.

Okay, so at some point you get a power where Bulbasaur rises state.

I want to be like not a fuddy duddy here because I think people may be like,

hey, Weiger, you're fucking old.

Fuddy duddy.

Yeah, you're a fuddy duddy.

You old-ass fuddy duddy.

You're saying shit like that into your car stereo.

You're gonna go to Fudd Ruckers, you fuddy duddy.

I'd love to go to Fudd Ruckers.

I wish there was one standing.

I wish I would go there today.

The stuff I love about this game, and the reason I was like, this fucking rocks through my first like six hours of playtime is the new stuff.

The stuff I really have a lot of enthusiasm for is the, are the things that they added to Final Fantasy 16, the stuff that disrupts

a lot of what they've established in

the previous games.

I think the combat system is so fun.

I think it's just like the flow state you get into it.

It sucks.

It sucks.

Okay, you're saying it sucks.

I do want to get to this, but...

I think it's so fun.

I think you immediately get into the flow state.

Once I switched it to where I was using the shoulder buttons

from Soft Style style to for the combat i just had uh i just had an absolute blast with it i do really like the staggering system for both mini bosses and bosses i think that's like great and i think it's really satisfying when you stagger an enemy and you just get to fucking wallop on them for a while the only issue i have with it is well i have a few issues with it one i wish it that it feels like for a game that is so leaning into you know elemental attacks that the elements should have some effect other than just dealing raw raw damage agreement that's really strange that it's just purely an aesthetic difference the other thing is just and this is partly why I kind of got I fell off of it this may be the main reason why I fell off of it beyond the story uh feeling kind of generic which was touched on is that it's just so easy it's just such a brain-dead difficulty level that I just never really felt like I was having any sort of challenge with anything.

And that bummed me out.

But the actual system is a blast.

Okay.

I will amend my statement because that is my complaint with the combat system.

Is I have no idea if it's a good combat system because I've never used a fucking potion.

Like, I'm 36 hours into this fucking game, and my potions are capped.

Like, you can only carry four or six or whatever the fuck it is.

And

whenever you collect one on the battlefield,

if you're, if you've even taken like a hit,

like it will

heal you up so that that one hit is is gone.

I just just interject on that real quick because I do actually like that system.

Since you have a cap on the number of potions you can carry, when you come across an extra potion in the wild, it automatically uses it when you pick it up.

I think that's a great implementation.

I love it.

But there is, I think, something broken in a game where

there's like

I use, like, I'm, I'm, and I'm, I know, oh, Heather is so good at games.

Oh, she's such a good player.

Oh, Heather's so cool.

Oh, she's all the best of all.

Heather's awesome.

Oh, she's not a funny daddy like Weiger.

She's a fucking hard.

But balancing potion use is part of the Final Fantasy experience.

It's, you know, risk and reward, and sometimes risk and failure.

And

taking those risks and pulling off something in older Final Fantasy games or or like skin of your teeth beating a boss with no potions left, and you're like out of spells or you're out of magic.

Like, that was part of, for me, the difficulty curve of Final Fantasy games was there was something that could happen.

Whereas I don't like, there's, it's so

like, as soon as there are S-level marks on the fucking monster board, I'm hunting those marks and I'm doing it when I have no party members because I'm like, at least this is interesting, sort of.

But Mary was watching the game and she's like, what are you doing?

Like, you're just

hitting this guy forever and he's not dying.

And I was like, yeah, this is the, that's a monster system.

And she's like, is he hurting you?

And I was like, nope.

It feels like the evasion window is pretty generous.

And even the evasion, the window for a, what was it called?

The prestige evasion?

What do you call it when you get a pretty good?

A precision dodge or yeah?

Precision dodge.

Yeah, when you get a precision dodge, which feels super satisfying.

Get a precision dodge followed precision counterdodge.

It's so cool.

It looks fucking terrific.

It looks awesome.

It feels great.

It's really satisfying.

It would be more satisfying.

You felt like, oh, hey, I achieved something here.

Not that I'm just like, hey, the window's wide enough where it's just easy for me to string these together.

And the same sort of of thing with the counter system, which I, you know, I feel like I do more counters by accident because I'm just doing a flurry of attacks.

Like, oh, okay, I did a counter there.

Okay, there we go.

The greatest feeling in video games is, I think, a parry in Street Fighter 3, a parry in Dark Souls/slash Elden Ring.

And

those

moments are

such immense risk in order to achieve the effect.

Like, you are literally letting down your guard and perhaps taking full damage, or you are negating all of the damage and you're achieving the thing.

And

this just feels weightless.

It pumps me out.

Can I offer a counter and then lodge

different complaint?

Decision, Matt.

I'm here to hear.

Matt, I'm here to hear your defense of this game because I know you love this game.

I want to love this game.

There's nothing more I'd like more than to play the new Final Final Fantasy and be like, this is my shit.

You guys are complaining, or not complaining, critiquing

the difficulty of this game.

One of my favorite things about this game

is that it's easy.

If this game was hard and it was this,

if this game was hard and it was presented as it is right now, I probably wouldn't like it so much.

Like, there's like a good chance that if it was harder, I wouldn't have finished it, right?

Because like,

I don't know.

Uh,

there were a couple times that I died and was like mad, and I was like, okay, like, that sucks.

And then I would just do it like two more times and be like, oh, like, I just needed to remember to dodge or whatever.

Like, that's like, that's it.

Like, it's, you can basically win any encounter

if you're just remembering to do the things that you're supposed to be doing.

I was worried several times while playing that I was going to break my square button because I was just smashing that thing like crazy.

Right.

Uh, yeah, but and so that's maybe a critique that I have of it as well: is that

I don't think, uh, as far as attacks go, that there's enough variance in the buttons like uh that you could be pushing.

Because, like, I'm gonna tell you right now, if I'm not using one of the icon bowers, I'm not pressing triangle.

I don't, I'm not trying to throw a fireball at anybody, I'm not doing that.

Like, that's just not how I'm playing the game at all.

Uh, that's a waste of a button push to me.

Oh, man.

We play differently.

Yeah, I like throwing things.

I'm getting in there and I'm destroying.

My goal in any encounter is to kill the

enemy without breaking the combo.

So

my chain of combat is the

four

slashes to knock them down while charging my magic with my second finger.

Cause as I've said I hold the controller like a claw for this game uh then releasing the charged magic which is a launcher so they'll fly up in the air then doing the

strike magic strike magic strike magic uh combo then the downward

slash which brings them back down to the gam the ground so that I can charge the magic and launch them again and I just try and

with each enemy if if they can be knocked down, then

it's yeah, even then, though, it's like, well,

I feel like I'm typing the same word over and over again.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

My battle strategy was this: start an encounter.

Oh, this is not if it's like just like on the field encounters.

If it's boss or a hunting sort of situation,

chugging a lionheart

potion, What?

A lionheart potion, or whatever that's called.

What's that?

That's the one that increases your

like special meter.

Okay.

Or like it makes it so that for a period of time, it grows or it fills faster than normal.

Okay.

So I'm chugging that.

Doing the stone skin one for defense.

And then the, I can't remember what the one's called for attack.

Like that makes you stronger.

Strength tonic.

Strength tonic.

Yeah.

I think that's, yeah, yeah, that's it.

Then with a full

like special meter

R3L3, baby, locking that in, getting that out there, bursting, going nuts.

Sure.

Then I'm cycling.

I had a

good

icon build.

I had specific ones, especially late game that I really liked and that cooled down

differently.

So like by the time one was done, like by the time I got through all of them, it would sort of like okay, that is fun when you start getting other icons and you can toggle between them and monitor their cooldowns and just like that, that sort of spinning plates is a lot of fun.

And again, speaks to my enthusiasm for the combat as I and I and late game, there's some great ones, there's some really great ones that are that are awesome.

They're so fucking cool.

I'm cycling through those, and then when I'm done, when those are like cooling down, I'm just fucking

breaking that square button, talk, just like, just like, just smashing that thing, dude.

dude.

And

then just winning.

And then

going on and doing something else.

One of my complaints that I teased,

you get this,

after every sort of like main encounter, you're back at the hideaway, right?

And the hideaway is like your sort of hub before you can go back out into the main world and do side quests or main quests or whatever you want.

You have the blacksmith and you have...

Oh, fuck, what's the blacksmith's name you have charon the blackthorne blackthorne the blacksmith of course and charon is like the items person uh or charon i think uh

and

you can always buy new items or craft new items with the uh um

blacksmith and then uh you can um

like increase their effectiveness with the blacksmith as well uh i can't remember what that's that's called at the moment um

They have almost no, it doesn't matter.

It almost doesn't matter because you can just buy the next one and then you're just a little stronger for a little bit of time until you can get the next one.

And then it's like, who cares?

This is okay.

This is basically my biggest complaint with the game is that these things that are so, so fun in RPGs and have been very fun in past Final Fantasies,

you know, not that crafting is necessarily a big element, but, you know, an element in other RPGs, resource collection and crafting, and then an upgrading equipment, or just getting new equipment.

Like that is so, such a big part of progression in one of these games beyond just your levels going up, which also I feel like your levels going up don't really feel, they feel really incremental.

It doesn't feel like it affects things much.

Because it's all anchored in one main town hub,

and because you just sort of like reach the next node in the story,

and it's just like, hey, there's new equipment available, hey, there's new upgrades available.

It all feels arbitrary and abstract.

And I think part of the fun of adventuring is like, oh, wow, I'm in a new world.

I'm in a new town.

I'm in a new biome.

And look, they have new gear here.

And this new gear does different stuff.

Or like, oh, wow, I found this new resource.

What does this resource do?

And all that stuff to me just feels completely,

you know, generic and doesn't feel like it has, it feels like you're just going through the motions in terms of

upgrading your character.

character there's also in those games frequently trade-offs like it'll be like well this this sword has a higher magic uh attack but a much lower standard strike and so it's like well what is my play style and none of that is present here i am 36 hours into this fucking game and i have never bought anything like i've i've i like i have i have hundreds of thousands thousands of gill, and I go to the fucking stores, and I'm like, the only thing that I can buy is the music for the jukebox because there's no gear.

There's like,

I also feel like I run in video games where you can spend money, I run poor.

Like, anybody who's played Fortnite with me knows that I never have money because if there is something to spend the money on in the game, I will exhaust my coffers in order to get the latest equipment or re-roll a thing or whatever.

And with this, it's like by the time I go to the fucking blacksmith, like whatever the fancy sword is, I've already hunted everything on the board because that's the first thing I do when I go in a town is I hunt monsters.

Cause I'm like, at least there's a

like, at least the big marks are a little bit more interesting with their spell casting or something.

Like there's a, there's a fucking eyeball monster that can kill you in one hit.

And I was like, ooh, this, I know this spell.

I know to avoid whatever this

thing is.

And I know it's going, like, this is, this is something worth having a little bit of a fight with.

But like, I should, I shouldn't be, I mean, yeah, he's a prince or whatever, but like, I shouldn't be fucking rich as shit.

Like, it should always be like, am I going to get a high potion or am I going to get an elixir?

Like, that feeling a fun thing you can do with that gil

at the bar at

the hideaway

you can buy a round for everybody and it costs 10 000 gil and everybody really likes that

that's a that's like kind of fun uh but you mentioned the the hunt board

and i simply must mention

that the

the proprietor of the hunt board

is the sole moogle of the game, and his name is Nectar, and I love him.

Yeah, he's great.

That's great.

He's great, and he almost wasn't in the game.

Shut up, Nectar.

Yeah, I saw that too.

And I can't imagine.

It's too weird.

Too weird in this Final Fantasy game to have a Moogle in here.

What's going on?

So the Chocobo theme only plays for two bars and then drops out.

And you have because the Chocobo theme's too weird.

Like it's, there's.

Fuck, this is Final Fantasy of the Spirits Within the game.

It's not, Nick.

They ran away from Final Fantasy.

They made the Spirits Within the game.

It's not that.

Considering that one of the monsters uses a power called Spirits Within.

Okay, yeah,

that's true.

I want to go back to something Heather said a second ago because I think it was a really great point and it's a really great insight.

And there's an example in the recent past.

In current gaming generation of Square Enix doing the exact opposite, which is having trade-offs for equipment.

And that's Final Fantasy VII Remake, a game I adore, a game I think is so fun, a game that I also think just has a great combat system that has, you know, not the most difficult game I've ever played, but a little bit more challenge to it and a little bit more tactical considerations you have to do.

And also that includes your loadout of your equipment for your characters.

So Cloud, for instance, has starts off with a buster sword.

The buster sword has like, you know, a couple of Materia slots and then just like sort of like a very, it's a very balanced weapon in terms of attack and magic attack.

As you progress, you get game, you get,

you know, weapons that have like more materia slots, which allows you to have more abilities in them, and maybe a higher magic attack, but like a lower, you know, a regular attack for than your buster sword.

Or you get a weapon like the nail bat, which is just like a super powerful weapon with no materia slots.

So if you want to go like, you know, I'm just going to go full-on Bruiser.

I'm just going to go guy who's going to gonna shit up that's the direction i'm gonna go you get you can do that

and and

like it actually feels like even though you've got like a clearly defined player character cloud in the same way that that that you know clive is in this game a character who has his own like established narrative you're not really like role-playing this character all that much you're not making that many decisions for them Still, you get to choose how you want to build them.

And

like, I think that's super fun.

I ended up just running the Buster Sword the whole game, partly because it was like, you know what, it's fucking cloud and that that feels appropriate.

But I know that there are all sorts of ways to play it, and I kind of wish there was more of it.

I mean, I do wish there was more of that in Final Fantasy 16 instead of just like, okay, now I have the bastard sword plus one.

All right, what the fuck?

Sure.

Yeah, I don't know.

I don't even know what that, I honestly don't know what the fuck equipment I have most of the time.

I like when games let you change

aesthetics, right?

Like

I kind of got that's part of it.

I kind of got sick of seeing Clive's clothes.

I I wanted to see different clothes.

I wanted to just like wear different armor.

Yeah, that'd be fun.

That's not going to change the game that much.

Maybe, you know, a stat, like, you know, a trade-off of some kind, right?

Like, that's like fine.

Maybe he's a little like

sturdier, but more resistant or less resistant to certain types of attacks or whatever.

Like, that could have been cool.

Well, I think, I think also because the elemental attacks don't have, you know, again, it's all just raw damage, that, that also removes some of the ability to, you know, give you some trade-offs.

You can change the look of Link, which,

you know, 20 years ago, if you'd been like, yeah, you can put Link in different clothes, it would be like, what?

It's Link.

You don't put Mario in different clothes.

But then that started to happen also.

Like,

it's weird that in a time of Elden Ring, in a time of

like even Legend of Zelda letting you dress your character in different things, that Final Fantasy is so, and I know that we're complaining in both directions here, but it's, it is weird that the only aesthetic change on Clive is the fucking sword.

And

often that change is not crazy enough.

Like the swords in these games are iconically bizarre, like water sword or like a sword that's like made out of a pretzel.

Like you like crazy fucking weaponry.

Don't give me that.

And

none of that is here.

Like all the swords are kind of just, there's like a purple kind of gruff looking one and a red sort of slicy looking one.

But like generally speaking, they're kind of all

basically the same.

I don't want to wield a big cactor or something.

Yeah.

I shared with you guys in the chat the lineage of Final Fantasy development teams and I think that's really interesting.

after Final Fantasy VI,

the development team sort of split in half, and you had one half go off to Final Fantasy Tactics, and one half go off to Final Fantasy VII.

The lineage on the seven team is seven, eight, ten, thirteen, and seven remake.

And then there is a small branch off that is Kingdom Hearts, Type Zero, and Final Fantasy XV, right?

On the other side is Tactics 9 in Vagrant Story, 12,

Final Fantasy 14 Online, and then Final Fantasy 16.

And

you can feel the difference between this team and the other team in this game.

Like this game feels a lot more like

tactics

and...

But it's it, but also it's like 7, 8, 10, 13, and 7 remake all kind of feel like the same story being told across games.

Like some kind of

aesthetic, some vocabulary,

the things that are important to that team.

A little bit more science fiction and cyberpunky.

Yeah, yeah.

The things that are important to that team remain the flavor of Final Fantasy that I'm familiar with.

Whereas tactics 9, 12, and 16 are a little bit different.

And the truth is

12 is like fucking weird.

Yeah, 12 is great.

12 is fantastic.

You still get these like, you know, pontificating white dudes in armor who are like, well,

the role of Dalmasca shall not be bent.

Like, you get all that shit in 12, but also they're all wearing what looks to be clocks.

Like every piece of clothing in 12 is like a clock.

Like, whereas 16, it's like, yeah, okay, that's a.

And the

man, I really wanted to love this so much.

Me too.

The towns are ugly.

And

they're not

specific enough to be Assassin's Creed medieval towns where you're like, oh, I guess that's the kind of well they used to use.

And they aren't fantasy enough to be like, oh, cool.

That building is on top of a crystal.

Like there are some iconic visual

towns in Final Fantasy 16, but all of your general towns are the same sort of medieval town or the same sort of desert town over and over again.

And they don't stand out quite enough to where, like, you're going to some of these places a couple of times.

And every time I go back, I'm like, wait, where is this?

Oh, okay, it's over there.

Like, it's like, I have to like reorient myself.

It's not like, they're easy to like remember the layouts.

Um,

something that

I've I've read about and experienced a little bit

was in the new game plus,

you can, um,

after you beat the game one time, you can get a new harder mode called Final Fantasy mode.

And I think that's so crazy that it's locked behind having to finish the game to play it with a harder difficulty.

Because

I started my new game plus in Final Fantasy mode.

And I will say,

it's harder.

But I don't know if it's like more fun.

Because your first encounters that you're having are with level 40, like, you know, level 43,

wherever you end up,

whatever carries over for you.

They're at your level and

they should be easy to take down because they're the first guys you encounter, but you're just hitting them for so long, and they're not really hitting you back because they're like

the first encounters, you know?

Yeah, that's that's a that's another issue, I think, with the combat is that just like some of the quote-unquote challenge just comes from the duration of these battles, which is just like there's not there's nothing mechanically all that complicated about this particular boss fight.

All of their tells are really obvious, uh, and but I just have to fight them for like you know, 12 straight minutes.

And so, basically, the main thing I'm battling is just fatigue.

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean,

I mean, people are getting mad at us.

They're not going to be mad.

They're not completely and commercially beloved.

I know, I know people.

We want to like this game.

We're rooting for this game.

It's just didn't quite connect with me.

I also think that the, just speaking of the combat, the thing that, you know, happens with some of these boss battles is the cinematic strikes and evasions,

which to me are just another thing of like

it feels kind of retrograde.

It feels like, I know this is an element that happens.

We still have context, you know, sensitive,

these sorts of events that happen, but to me, this feels like if you're playing a PS2 game, you know, and you're like, what are games going to look like?

What are games going to be like in 20 years?

You'd be like, well, like this, but prettier.

You know, if you didn't have an imagination, you'd just be like, I don't know.

This will be the same sort of thing.

You'll press a button, you'll have a timed button press in a glorified cinematic.

Um, and uh, during a boss battle, that that sort of thing will happen.

And I, I just felt like none of that was, was, was all that satisfying, and, and it, and it felt like style over substance, which is like maybe a general critique I have for this game.

Can we

are we haven't talked about the story really at all?

Is there anything we can say about the story, like in the like

just the early part of it?

Like, I know I've seen all of it, so I know how it shakes out.

Uh-huh.

But, like, the very basic story is: yeah, you're this like prince who is assigned to protect this, you're your younger brother, which is like weird because, like, you would do that anyway.

Like, you, like,

you wouldn't just be like, I'm gonna let my little brother die.

Like, you know, you're just gonna protect him.

Your brother has these powers of a phoenix, uh, and then there's like an incident where you believe him to have passed away, and you believe it that it was somebody's fault.

Um, but because he has these powers of the phoenix, you as the player and observer of the story

know that there's no way he's dead because he has phoenix powers uh yes and then later on you learn that it was actually your fault kind of we should i feel like we should get we should just get into spoiler country because you're kind of recapping a lot of it so okay well you know it's the beginning you know hold on to your hold on to your hats and glasses uh Saddle up.

That all happens in like the first

hour.

But I know, but yeah, but you're, I feel, I just see the road you're going down, and you're on that pack mule, and you're, you're descending into the canyon, no, to spoiler.

All right, kiddie up, motherfucker.

Let's go.

Uh,

yeah, we're going to go.

And so then, I don't know, like, the time, there's a time jump, right?

Like, there's like, you start the game as you're older.

You go.

I like the time jump.

I think the time jump is crazy.

I think it's

time jump sucks.

No.

I think it's cool.

Here's the thing I'll say about the time jump.

Wait, which...

Okay.

we're in spoiler country, so there are, there's more than one time jump.

There's multiple time jumps.

I think it's cool.

Because

a lot of times nowadays, these video game characters, they're modeled after somebody, right?

Or they're like sort of loosely modeled after a person.

Not all of them are

all like human characters are created

are like brand new designs, right?

Or at least they're like motion captured a little bit.

These guys, they were like, hey, we're going to make a new guy

and we're going to make him young.

We're going to make him a little older.

And then we're going to make him just like a little bit older than that, too.

Like, you don't ever really get to see a video game character age in a specific way, which I think is cool.

And I will say that it's fucking ridiculous in that little bit older scene.

Like, it's, there's a five, there's a negligible.

There's like a 18-year time jump or something, and then there's like a five-year time jump.

And the five-year time jump happens after you've been playing with Clive for a while.

So you've been leveling him up, but then five years goes by and the dude doesn't level at all and he doesn't get any new equipment.

Like

five fucking years, that dude

hasn't fought one monster.

I get what you're saying.

Yeah,

that's just like a video game thing.

I don't know how you resolve that.

I think they could have just made him five levels higher.

It wouldn't have mattered.

Like they're fake.

Like, just give him five.

Like, you'd be like, oh, wow.

You know, like, make him 30 levels higher.

Who gives a shit?

Yeah.

You know, obviously you meet some characters along the way that are going to help you in your journey.

The best of which

is Sid.

I love Sid.

I thought you were going to say Torgill.

Well, Torgill, Torgill fucking rocks.

He's not helpful at all.

Torgle's great.

No.

No, he's cool.

Torgle fucking blows.

He's not good.

His healing ability is worse than Donald's.

It's real bad.

Like, he doesn't do anything.

He'll like attack.

Torgle to me, my boy.

Yeah, you can make him attack and stuff, but like, otherwise, he's not really doing anything.

Also, the attacks with the dog don't juggle or anything.

Like, if

because I keep my

battle menu basically on Torgle the entire like there's no reason to be on the fucking potion menu so like I'm doing sick and ravage and sick and ravage and nothing is fucking happening like you keep hoping that that yes the the I forget sick I think is just the attack and ravage is the one that that sort of uh uh pops them in the air right and it's like you keep I keep hoping like okay this will start some sort of combo sequence that this is and maybe there is a way to do it that I just didn't quite you know maybe maybe but

it isn't quite as effective as you want it to be.

No.

But the main, the main focus of the story is you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on with your brother.

And then once you find that out, the main thing that you're doing is you're destroying the mother crystals.

And along the way, you fight these

dominance of certain icons.

And then that's how you get more powers.

You have Ifrit,

Ifrit's powers.

and then you know you meet all the ones from final fantasy along the way you're you're you're uh

uh

well that's all i'll say garuda i think is the second garuda titan you know gives you the arrow powers and from there you get more powers and you can do like mix and matching in there and then

then you're off to the races and that's that's sort of what the story is And then, you know, more stuff happens later that I won't spoil because that's deeper than where you guys are.

I think that there are some cool story things.

First off, I want to shout out that I don't remember there ever being

gay characters in a Final Fantasy game before.

And there are gay characters that are story important, and there are gay characters like on the street.

Yeah.

Like you'll pass by dudes who are just like, Will I see you tonight?

I'm gay.

You're gay too.

Which I like.

that's nice it's nice it's not the whole world no you know like it's not like everybody is gay but it's nice to have like a little bit of inclusion and apparently that was such a problem that the game is not being released in saudi arabia which yeah good on good on them um

there there's um an element in the story that i like and we're in spoiler country and i don't know if nick's gotten to this uh so it'll be a spoiler for nick too do i don't don't care?

You don't care.

I like that.

He's not going to do it.

These, the people who have magic powers are treated like shit by the world.

Like they are, they are enslaved, effectively.

And then also that those magic powers kill the user.

Like over time, it just kills you.

And I was like, that's, that's neat.

That's a cool fantasy idea.

I mean, it's not like

good,

but it's, it's cool.

Um,

yeah, anyone with any sort of extraordinary ability or uniqueness is, is, tends to be marginalized.

Yeah.

So that would, that makes sense.

Yeah, I like, I like that because generally in these games, if you have magic,

it's like, oh, you're a wizard.

Congratulations.

Like, it's like, everybody's happy for you.

And then this, it's like, oh my God, my son was born with magic powers.

Put him in the trash.

Like, that's kind of neat.

Yeah, it being a curse.

That is cool.

What's not neat is that every quest that you have ends with the exact same gesture by Clive.

He hands something to somebody or receives something, and then that person walks off camera because you have to justify why they're not standing in the same place on the map.

That's not great.

I guess that's not a story point.

That's just a grumpiness.

I'm just

while we're talking story, and this is another thing that is new to the game.

And the other thing that I love beyond the combat is active time lore.

Love it.

I've talked about it before.

Active Time Lore is great.

Look,

video games, I've heard some issues, some complaints about like, hey, it disrupts the pacing and the cinematic nature of the cutscenes.

I get that, but also

video games are experienced differently than

other medium.

And I think

the ability to pause any cutscene at any time and also basically at any point in the world and just sort of see who the fuck are these people, especially for me when I was dealing with like, hey, I had to take a few days away for,

you know, because I had some

picket line duty or because I was traveling or something like that.

I'm coming back to the game, like, what the fuck is going on?

Who the fuck are these people?

What is this land called?

Just having that at the ready, I think is so great.

And I hope more games emulate this.

Pentamint had a similar system,

very different kind of game, but just like you could kind of basically hyperlinks for every keyword and you could get context for everything at any point.

I think it's awesome and I think it really helps the world building in the story.

I would love, I mean, like, I love any essentially a compendium, an index.

There are characters in the game that you can go talk to and basically look up anything that has ever happened in the world.

There's like

maps that you can examine of both character relationships and also the way the countries have interacted with one another.

All that shit I love.

Like, give me more of that.

That's great.

It's delicious.

The side quests in this game

either

suck

or are fine.

Like, none of them, none of the ones that I've done, or and I did quite a few of them.

Uh-huh.

I think by the time I was done with the game, I had like 10 left on my map at least.

So that could have been maybe, you know, that could be more, depending on the progression of those.

A lot of the early ones are, hey, I need wood.

Yes, right.

For the guy, hey, thanks.

Just go get this research.

Can you help deliver these plates to the people?

Yeah, sure.

Oh, this person needs this.

Take it to them in this town.

Great.

Oh.

I don't mind that because that's almost like tutorial, you know, type stuff.

It's like, like, fine, like I'm getting, maybe if you've never played one of these games before, now you know how a side quest works.

Well, later on,

it's like, hey, somebody has something I need over there.

Can you go get it?

Yeah.

Go get it.

Okay, here's the thing that that guy needs.

You can take it back to him.

Great.

I'm going to go take this back to that guy.

Give it to him.

Side quest is done.

Like, they don't get much more

difficult as the game goes on.

There's like some that have more beats than others.

Like, there's a

one series of SideQuest Blacksmith Blues where Blackthorne

gets sad at the things he's making.

You have to go get him something to cheer him up.

And he's like, oh, cool.

I have this now.

Now I can make the thing.

A lot of it, but it's like, or sometimes you have to fight.

There's like, oh, there's these, there's an infestation of

those like floating bomb head things.

Go take those out for me.

And then, you know, I can give you this or whatever.

And so it's like, it's a lot of stuff like that.

There's not like a, like,

there was one that was actually pretty sad.

That's kind of early on where you learn about, you're learning about how people with magic powers are being treated.

And

this one little girl is like playing with,

is like, is missing her

like her dominant or whatever, or her her branded that they're all called branded if you have magic you have like a brand of some kind on you

The quest you're referring to is the only good side quest.

Yes, and you are looking for this girl's branded.

You don't know where she is.

You find her dead behind the side of a house.

You're looking for her pet.

Yeah, so then she treats her like a pet.

Yeah.

So you're going around like looking for a dog.

Yeah.

And then you learn that it's her branded

that you're actually looking for, and you find.

And she's like, oh no, I didn't know that was going to happen.

And then she like learned that

she's, she's inches away from kicking the corpse.

Yes.

It's, it's a great, that's a great side quest.

That's a good one.

Uh, but then the rest of them, I'm just sort of like, I just kind of did them and was like, I don't even really care what they're saying.

Right.

I just like know that it's going to point me to where I need to go and I can go do that and come back and and

do it.

I really like,

so here's something I like.

I like the lore stuff in this game, as I've said.

Like I like all the dictionaries and tomes and like all that stuff.

I also like a lot of the item description and like menus on the wall at taverns that you can like read.

Yeah.

That being said,

the game hates chocobos and none of the other Final Fantasy Fantasy games have hated chocobos.

And it is pervasive throughout all of the descriptions of stuff on like on the walls or in your inventory.

I've got a few screenshots here.

Like Bloody Hide is a very typical crafting material that you receive from killing monsters.

Who the fuck knows what you use it for?

Because I've never had to make anything.

Like every time I go to make something at the blacksmith, it's like, you need like six of these.

And I have like 99 out of 99 in my inventory.

And I'm like, okay, right.

Bloody hide.

When properly treated with urine, lime, salt, and a lengthy soak in chocobo brains, this icer flecked skin will make for a fine piece of leather indeed.

It's like,

chocobo brains.

Okay.

Well,

then there's

like a menu.

Ah, here it is.

One of the menus has drink,

Gautland 870, brandy, wine, imperial gold, meat,

pandamane, stone blue, black pudding, smoked kippers, salt loach, roast hair, and then

also

chocobo stew.

So these motherfuckers are eating these fucking birds.

Like they're eating them and

killing them,

bashing open their skulls to like tan leather.

There's a description at one of the restaurants to marinate chocobo.

Prepare hen by draining blood and removing both head and feet.

Stir into a deep bowl of watered wine, preferably of the red variety, honey, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and any other seasonal savory herbs if you so desire.

Add to the bowl the dressed bird and let it lay in a dark room for a single turn of the sun.

Break the breastbone and ready your force meat thusly.

Chop together the heart and liver of the chocobo and mix it with the crumb of a stale barm and koopo nuts soaked in boiled cream.

Like, they hate fucking chocobos.

Yeah, and I don't, I don't know if this is in other ones, but they're like in the battle area and you can fight and kill them.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, look, it's it's a departure from how chocobos have been handled.

I think there's, you know, like a

layer to like, look, this world is just that bleak and fucked up that this is what happens.

But I think it

typifies what is the one issue for this game for longtime fans, which is it's kind of running away from what we like about it.

It's trying to be more Game of Thrones and less anime, and we liked it being anime.

I think there would, so I think if it had gone full Game of Thrones, though, I would have been completely on board.

If this had been Final Fantasy Colon Elden Ring, I'd have been like, fuck yes, this is my favorite game of all time.

You've got your sexy dude with his long hair, and every encounter is terrifying.

And then also, everybody is dying constantly.

I'd be like, fuck, I'm on board.

I'm on board.

Let's see some fucking hot.

Okay, this is going to be my fucking biggest complaint.

If you're going to imply nudity, if you're going to like do that fucking Austin Powers shit, don't do that.

Yeah.

I want to see how

I want to see it all.

We've got violence.

We've got like fuck and like, you know, cock said in this game.

Like we're so tussling.

They say fuck all of them.

My favorite fucks in the game are when you are ifrit and you say fuck.

Like when you're a fucking kaiju

and you say fuck, it rules.

It is so funny.

Because not just fuck, it's like fuck.

Yeah, it's kind of like the, okay, well, well, I think this, this also kind of speaks to how calculated it is for not just a Western, but particularly an American or North American audience, which is like knowing that Americans are very squeamish about sex and nudity, in particular when it comes to their children being exposed to it.

So, like, hey, I'll let my teenager play this game with fucking gore and cussing, but there better not be any breasts in it, you know.

But

I don't know.

Give us one.

They think they should have gone all the way.

Do we want to talk about some of the

music?

Yeah.

Love the music.

I like the music.

Don't love it.

Don't hate it.

I like it.

I've got a couple of tracks here that

are my

picks for Final Fantasy music.

They mostly sound like town themes, though I do have some like some

field music here.

Why don't you pick, play, play just any of them, Matt?

Here we go.

This one's

Idols of the Empire.

That's a good one.

Like you can have this on in the background for a long time.

And you do.

It's one of the songs you hear a lot.

Yeah.

But it's a good feeling.

How about another one, Matt?

Won't we play another Final Fantasy 16 track?

Here's Martha's Rest: The Founder's Footsteps.

Oh,

okay.

Well,

kind of similar.

It's kind of the same, yeah.

Oh.

oh okay, wait, but but I like it, I like it, but oh, this is why I only like this soundtrack.

Yeah.

Because I feel like the town themes in Final Fantasy games have been pretty disparate.

Like, Fisherman's Horizon doesn't sound like Ballum Garden.

And these...

Two all-timers.

Yeah.

And they're both in the same game.

I do like this overworld theme, though, from running around and killing some monsters.

Yeah.

Three reads forevermore.

Yeah.

Like, this is a really good track to play while you're hearing footsteps,

which is a lot of what the, like, running around is.

Yeah.

Just like footsteps.

And great orchestration.

Talking about running around, too, when you do the side quest where you can get the chocobo and you can then use the chocobo in the overworld and uh

and you know sort of effectively fast travel like you know throughout the the map.

It's too clunky to get on and off the chocobo.

I think you should be able to jump off of the chocobo.

You can jump onto the chocobo.

What's that?

It's the Diablo Floor mountain problem.

It's, you know, it's like there's a weird.

It's just dismounting and mounting.

Like, that should be.

I don't know.

Look, this is the thing.

Fuck.

I'm.

I think that after the post-Elden Ring, I just want every mount to work with that.

Yeah, absolutely.

Which is unfair to other games, but it's just like they, they just sort of solved it.

I feel like I have to play

just the victory fanfare

because

I feel like it's in this game, it's really good.

And I don't, for some reason, I feel like you don't hear it enough.

Like, you hear it sometimes, but I'm like, this should happen every time.

That's That's good shit.

That rules.

Yeah, it's really fucking good.

And, you know, how are they going to surprise us with each one?

You know,

what's the new version of it?

And this is a great day.

Really, really good.

We should wrap this up because

we're running tight on time and everyone's going to be mad at us.

Yeah, nobody has listened to the second half of this episode.

But

we should get some of your thoughts.

It's time for the U-play of our We Play U-Play, your review crew, the Rio Crew.

All right, here we go.

These are all from our Discord, discord.gg slash get played pod.

Is that what it is?

Here we go.

This one's from Not Rock.

Sub Not Rock.

Sub Not Rock.

Hi, Not Rock.

Is this game perfect?

No.

is this a game where i said holy shit out loud to myself more than i can ever remember doing yes wow all right

i think that's fair does have some holy shit moments yeah we didn't really talk about the like the icon battles they're all like basically huge kaiju fights you versus the other uh icon and it rocks it's it's all that stuff rules um they they they look really cool i wish it felt like there were any stakes but it like like just in terms of the uh absence of any sort of difficulty to them, but I, but they do.

It doesn't feel like you could fail those encounters at all.

Like, it's like, okay, well, this is the sequence where I get this.

This next one's from Mirror B.

Play the demo, and my wife thought Torgle was so cute that she bought me the game.

10 out of 10 adorable little puppies.

Wow.

Oh, that's nice.

That is cute.

It's a cute story.

It's a cute story.

And

Bulgasaur writes, Year of the Torgle/slash Turgle.

I'm telling you guys.

Turgle from Jedi Survivor, Torgle from Final Fantasy 16.

Lots of Turg.

It's just interesting.

That's all I'll say about it.

It's just interesting.

Give me one more.

What's next?

Targle?

I guess I'm throwing away my script.

There goes Targal.

This next one is from Rebel of the Neon God.

Oh, fuck.

Holy shit.

Fuck.

Hold on.

I got a Bing Rebel of the Neon God.

Is that anything?

Or is that an

oh, okay.

That's a 1992 film.

The Taiwanese film that came out in 1992.

I gotta fucking watch that.

That sounds good.

Yeah.

Title alone.

That is good.

They write, given the slump the series has been in for so long, it's really cool that they've made a significant comeback with number with the number 16.

It feels like some tension or dissonance has been resolved, or like a musical measure that has been completed, as in with the 16th notes.

there's no other series in the world i want to complete every game from so this has been a really momentous release for me hey i'm glad you enjoyed it i i think this is you know can i just say that because i'm not trying to yuck anyone's down me neither me neither sharing our thoughts i i love that matt i love that our friend matt had a great time with me too

um

i i think that i wonder if there's something because i've had this discussion with people about indiana jones and i think that there are some people who maybe really didn't like uh crystal skull but enjoy the latest Indiana Jones because it is something of a return to form, even though I feel like the latest indie doesn't work at all and I didn't like it.

And I also don't have the objections to Crystal Skull that a lot of people do.

So I wonder if there's sort of a thing of like, if people really had a negative reaction to 13 and 15, that maybe they're like more positive on this game, whereas someone like Heather, who absolutely loved 15, is maybe going to be, you know, biased the other way.

I don't know.

I'm just a theory.

I don't want to get too into this.

The latest indie had me up until act three.

I was like, okay, this is like fine.

Not the most fun, but fine.

Act three, I was like, this fucking sucks.

I was like, this is so bad.

I didn't care for the movie, but act three is so bat shit that I was like.

In a series where

they've seen aliens.

And I'm like fine with that as an idea.

Cause like, who cares?

Yeah.

The 700-year-old Grail Knight.

All right, fine.

Yeah, I don't give a shit.

And then

what happens in Act 3 of Indy 5 is like, oh,

don't spoil it.

Don't spoil it.

I forgot that Nick saw it too, that he didn't like it.

Nick, after this, I'm going to text you something very specific about it afterward.

Okay, great, great.

This one's from Riley Relly.

I'm not sure.

R-E-L-I on our Discord.

Sorry for botching that.

What's up, buddy?

Wasn't planning on playing it until I saw my husband do the Bahamet fight.

Immediately kicked him off the game and and started and started it myself.

The game is gorgeous.

The fighting is super enjoyable, and I really enjoyed the story beats.

10 out of 10 would kick husband off the PS5 again to play.

Great.

Great.

Glad you had fun.

I'm also glad.

Combat is great and it is gorgeous.

It does look pretty good.

Like, even though it's like

ugly,

like

the stuff that pops really pops.

This one's from Garu Hodo.

Medieval English Kaiju Simulator 16 is one of my favorite games this year, and it's a crowded year.

That's honestly kind of how I feel about it, too.

Like, I know that, like, you know, I did, you know, levy some complaints also,

along with you two.

I obviously liked it more than you guys in general.

In a year where

Tears of the Kingdom

didn't come out and this game came out instead, it might be my number one.

But because

Tears of the Kingdom is a completely different thing, and also I liked it a lot more than this.

Well, also, I think, like, and

for my experience, like a big part of how you respond to a game is like when it hits you and what the other context is.

I think if Dave the Diver doesn't like come out of nowhere this past month and absorb so much of my gaming time, I probably would have put more hours.

I mean, I definitely would have put more hours into Final Fantasy 16.

I might have a different take.

But, you know, unfortunately, the game of the year came out by sheer coincidence.

I will say

that

it's in part because my hours are so shifted that nobody is ever online when I'm ready to play Fortnite.

But the last month, I have

mostly played Final Fantasy with very few Fortnite breaks.

And considering the

tonnage of Fortnite that I was playing before that,

it's not a bad game.

Like Final Fantasy is not a bad game.

And I don't resent that I've had to play it for the show.

It's just

not for me.

Not for you.

That's okay.

Here's somebody that might agree.

This is Ace 3.

What's up, Ace 3?

The highs are high, but man, the game can drag in between those moments.

But overall, enjoying the game almost up to the final boss.

Now it took me way too long to realize that I could have actually mixed different icon powers into the different icon-based sets.

Ooh.

That's.

You have to know that you can do that.

Yeah.

It kind of does it for a game that has like a lot of

holds your hand through some of the tutorials.

Like some certain aspects like that, I feel like are kind of buried.

Some of the aspects, yeah, like of like the gameplay are like buried for how much there is, like you can look at anything, like, and it'll tell you, you know, like lore and stuff like that.

Like, they're like, very, like, you can find anything how to do any of this.

But, like,

you have to master, like, I don't think there is like a specific tutorial that's like, or like a menu that tells you

you have to master an icon ability for you to be able to place it

within a different set.

Like, let's say you have

the Phoenix one, but you want to use a Gerudo

ability in that, in one of those slots.

You have to master one of those slots, which is using experience, like,

or it's called a different thing.

I can't remember what it's called.

Ability points or something.

Yeah, which is, yeah.

Which is just, and I'm sorry to cut you off, which is just another thing that just kind of like upgrading your, the, the, effectively what the skill tree is in the game also kind of feels kind of inconsequential.

And

all right, what is this?

All right, so I've mastered this thing.

All right, show me.

And then you can put it, though, you could take it out of the Gerudo one and you can put it, you know, in Titan or in

Phoenix or whatever, or if, yeah, ifrit.

I'll tell you,

late game, you're mixing and matching.

You got some good stuff.

You got some pretty nice stuff late game.

I had a lot of fun at the end.

I'm going to trust you on the late game being fun.

You're not going to take my word for it necessarily, but you're going to trust me.

No, I will take your word for it.

I will absolutely take your word for it.

I'm going to finish it.

I'll play it.

I'm going to play it all the way through, and then I'll be able to say in a couple of weeks whether or not my mid-game judgment held.

Because maybe I'll be like, holy shit, this was great.

That was great.

This is awesome.

This is my prediction.

Because Heather has put so much time into it and is pretty close, Heather will finish it.

I think Nick might play it for a few more hours, maybe,

and then be like, fuck this.

I'm not doing this.

Yeah, I think that's a fair prediction.

But you know what?

I am going to do.

I am going to watch Rebels of the Neon.

Oh,

it's on movies.

Great streaming service.

That's, yeah, I want to know all about that.

This is the last one I'll read.

I'll report back next week.

This is from Homak on our Discord.

What's up, Homak?

I've been a big fan of Final Fantasy for most of my life,

somewhat checked out since X.

None of the games past it have really clicked with me, but this one was such a breath of fresh air that it's like the first game in the series I've actually reached the end of since X.

Fantastic game.

Wow.

Wow.

Everybody's very different than Terry.

Everybody's doing a different journey.

And I'm.

Here's what I'll applaud:

there's no other series of games that does this.

No.

100%.

Like, go ahead and have.

It's

if you're 16 games into a series and we get to like point at different ones and be like, oh, I like that one.

Oh, I like this one.

Like, there's nothing like Call of Duty may have 16 games.

I'm sure it does.

But you don't, like, nobody's like, man, the Call of Duty where you were like dogs instead of soldiers

was crazy.

Strategy game.

Yeah, you know what?

It's like if you look back at the Super Nintendo Zelda or the Super Nintendo Mario games, and you can draw like a squiggly line to

Tears of the Kingdom and Super Mario Odyssey.

You can say like, okay,

this is like a 3D version of the same core fundamental gameplay evolved in a lot of, you know, over

the years.

I think if you look at Final Fantasy IV, which Matt is playing now, and you look at Final Fantasy 16, it's like, wow, that's like a complete departure from the conventions of the series in a cool way.

So, yes, that is, that is, I like that about this game.

I like that they took that swing.

And that's it for the Ryu crew, everybody.

Thanks for writing in

and being part of our cool little Discord community.

We love that.

And that's this week's Get Played.

Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, DeadAir Alex G on Twitter and Instagram.

And hey, we've also got our paywalled show, Get Anime, going, which you can now find only at patreon.com slash get played.

Heather, get animated this week.

Well, we're back on our shit covering the melancholy of Harihi Suzumiya mid-2000s mega hit season two,

and we're watching episodes 13 and 14.

That's right.

That's right.

So come check us out on patreon.com slash get played.

You don't have to like anime in order to listen because it's just us.

We're just talking about stuff.

But if you like anime, then you will definitely love it.

Yeah, just as we have listeners who apparently don't play video games and listen to this podcast, we also have listeners who don't watch anime and listen to Get Anime.

So, you know, you can be in that demographic if you like.

But I would encourage you to watch along the show, especially this one.

This one's a lot of fun.

It was new to me and Matt, but I were really enjoying it.

Melancholy forui Suzumiya.

Our episodes, patreon.com/slash get played.

Guys,

I think

I think you all got played.

Oh shit.

Fuck.

Got us.

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