So I have been playing Final Fantasy XVI on my PS5 which will be coming out on PC in about 6 months or so and I must say, the game has some of the worst human character designs I have seen in history.

I'll post two pictures, one of them is an NPC character from Final Fantasy XV on a PS4 and the other is a main character from Final Fantasy XVI from PS5. Guess which one is which?

That's right, the one on the left is from PS4 while the one in the right is from PS5. Like hello? And this is the problem with basically every character in XVI other than the main character. They all look generic and uninspired. Now the monsters and boss monster designs are epic. And I am loving the story so far. But with characters so generic and unforgettable looking, it's really hard to care about any of them despite the crazy stuff and brutal stuff that happens in the game.

Highly recommend the series.

Steam/GOG pretty much has all of the games - and the prices are great.

I played through Ys 1, 2 , Origin, Oath in Felghana and Ark of Napishtim.

Next one I will play will be Seven, then Memories of Celceta - and from there I'll play VIII. I still need to buy Ys IX - might do it this year if the price range goes down enough.

Bear in mind - Memories of Celceta is the remake of IV and Oath is the remake of Ys III

V has yet to get a remake but I am hoping that will come next after Ys 10.


You dont have to play them in order since the story is separate in each entry but you might miss some aspects/jokes if you dont play the games in order - its not necessary.

Also Ys Origin is completely cut off from the rest of the series - its basically Ys 0 - takes place several hundred years or so from Ys 1 and afterwards - features different protagonists.

I would recommend playing Ys Origin (as that was my first entry into the series back in 2012) - the gameplay is more user friendly in comparison to Ys 1 and Ys 2 where both of the games were more difficult (though you can change that with easy mode on PC).

Yeah, the character designs werent as good - not a surprise since the FFXIV team made it, its basically the same character facial designs lol.

Yea but even XIV had better and more interesting looking characters than XVI. It just feels dumb that a game like FFXV which ran on jag cores and GCN looks better than a game that runs on Zen 2 + RDNA. Like where's my next gen stuff? Cause this game just feels like it could run on a PS4 with proper optimization.

Yeah, ngl, but it looks like XV aged better than what we're seeing with XVI.

Also you can tell it's the XIV team due to the pursed style of lips they go for (during my time playing XIV, I saw plenty of NPC's with those pursed lip styles and it always looked like they wanted to take a dump).

What makes me wonder, is how long did this game spend in the oven compared to XV, because know XV took donkey's years to finally come out.

Yea I will say that story and characterization wise, XVI is a lot better than XVs "Gotta watch the movie, play all the DLCs, watch the anime, read the manga, etc" to figure out what the shit in going on. XVI is a lot more straight forward and you really do feel for the characters and their backstories and such. It's just because they don't look all that memorable and can really look yikes at times, it just doesn't give the proper shock as the game should be giving.

I am sure XV took a really long time to come out but like, I am not even asking generic NPCs to have the character models of XV. Just have the main characters and villains that you interact with frequently have interesting character designs. SE has always been one of the leaders of this. Even with XIII which is a game I did not like, the character models were excellent. Just feels like a big let down because of how long the game is and how otherwise excellent it is.

Thanks for the recommendations.

Yeah the character models are quite bad in comparison to the rest, which is really high quality. And it sticks out like a sore thumb. When you superb dialogue, VO, combat etc the animations of the faces and character models just don't add up. The names are also generic as hell lol. Doesn't bother me but yeah a little lol-worthy.

With that said its an amazing game. Not quite the FF's of old. More like an action game and perhaps an RPG lite much like Kingdom Hearts and perhaps closer to God of War. Can see people not liking it due to its linear structure and cutscene heavy nature. Though for me its so good. Can't put it down xP

"Can see people not liking it due to its linear structure and cutscene heavy nature."

Wait, what? Some people criticize a FF game for having too many cutscenes? Man, that's the main reason why they sumped the ship from Nintendo to Sony, to be able to fit more cutscenes into CDs.

What were this people playing back th... Oh, I get it. They must be young and haven't played any of those FF games, maybe not even one with the classic turn-based combat.

Yea pretty much which is surprising since SE usually puts a lot of effort into it. But yea the story and character arcs are quite good if not very brutal. Feels like a story for grown ups than the usual anime/weeb targeted nature of past FF games which I also do like but it's a nice change of pace. I was initially under the impression it would be largely linear but some of the later levels does open up.

I do like the boss battles quite a lot. Their scale feels like Azuras Wrath in terms of battles and the character designs on those are what I come to expect from a FF game. The music is also quite good and at times, it does give me the next gen feel even if it's not all the time. Hopefully when it comes to PC, the modders will revamp a lot of these generic characters so we can have the proper experience lol.

@JEMC I mean there is a lot (even for an FF), which some may not appriciate. Seen some critisms online, nagging on about it on other forums. I don't mind them personally. It breaks up the action, which gets pretty crazy. And some of the boss battles are just *chefs kiss*.

And yeah its probably people who aren't used to playing older FF's where you'd require more patience getting into them. The older games you actually had to read all dialogue too lol.