Final Fantasy XVI PC Review - Good Game, Basic Port
Square Enix has something of a rocky history in bringing Final Fantasy titles to PC. Even as far back as the original release of Final Fantasy VII, there have been problems with their PC ports and that has continued until this day. To be fair, it hasn’t always been a dodgy road. The recent Final Fantasy VII remake release was very solid, with very little in the way of issues, but it is hard to deny that Square Enix’s track record isn’t the best. So now we come to Final Fantasy XVI (FFXVI) and I guess the question is, how much effort did Square put in this time around?
First things first, the game itself. I really enjoyed FFXVI, so much so that it actually became the very first Final Fantasy game that I have finished. The franchise for me always got me in the door but never dragged me through to the end, but in this case, the story, battles and style were enough to see me fight my way through to the final battle when it came out on the PS5. I won’t say I liked it as much as Paul did in his original review, I still think it has structural issues and design flaws, but overall the action combat and truly epic Titan battles won me over. All of that holds true for the PC version. Like a lot of Console-to-PC ports, a controller is a must as the game was clearly not designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind. However, who doesn’t have a controller on their PC these days?
The PC version also includes two hefty expansions, so this is the complete collection of everything that was released for FFXVI. Great news if you never got to play in because of a lack of a PS5. However, some issues seem specific to this version that didn’t crop up when I was playing on the PS5.
The first is due to the very nature of the game. FFXVI is a bombastic action RPG that is best played on the biggest screen possible. There is no denying that the game loses some impact when you are playing on a computer monitor as opposed to a whopping big TV. This isn’t helped by the fact that the PC version doesn’t support Ultrawide resolutions. The extra immersion that Ultrawide offers would go a long way to offsetting the diminished spectacle. I understand that it may not be an easy thing to include, but PC gamers are really starting to expect Ultrawide support in their games so there is no doubt it is a little disappointing.
The other thing is the optimisation of the game isn’t nearly as good as it could be. This is especially noticeable as I just came from reviewing the excellent port of God of War Ragnarok, an absolutely stunning game that worked incredibly well on a huge range of system configurations. With FFXIV things weren’t quite so flexible. It worked fine on my gaming rig but on my lesser laptop (4050 laptop card) I ran into quite a few frame rate stutters and the like, despite playing with the graphical settings extensively to get the best fit. Things were even worse on my ROG Ally X which was borderline unplayable without really knocking everything to its lowest setting. Even then it was hardly ideal. It is clear the porting team just didn’t put the effort into refining the PC release in a way that would support a huge range of systems.
The good news is that the PC port has no bugs or glitches that I came across. This is a fully working port and not one of those games that are brought over in a rush, creating a huge mess of glitches and issues. No pop-in, no graphical wonkiness and no odd behaviours. If you have a quality gaming rig, it works really really well which is always something that we PC players want confirmed before we dive in. We’ve all been bitten too many times before not to be worried.
FFXVI is still a good game on the PC, it is very nearly a great one, but the PC port while perfectly functional, feels like the bare minimum which does the whole experience a disservice. With a little more effort, Square could have really made FFXVI sing on the more powerful platform, but instead they opted to keep things simple and it is hard not to be disappointed with that. With that in mind and the epic nature of the combat, I feel like the PS5 version is still the best way to play this game. If you don’t have a PS5 but do have a good PC then you will certainly have a good time, just don’t expect any of the bells and whistles that most PC games offer in this day and age.
Final Fantasy XVI was reviewed on PC with code kindly supplied by Square Enix.
