Final Fantasy XVI

Shattering the crystalware

Numbered Final Fantasy games don’t come around often, and the last few single-player ones have been – let’s be honest – a bit of a letdown. But if those suffered from the poison of development hell and feature creep, then FFXVI has 99 antidotes stocked to cure those ails. Respecting the series’ history, it moves Final Fantasy forward with twitchy, satisfying real-time combat and impressive performance-led storytelling.

The way FFXVI builds on the RPG behemoth’s legacy is like poetry – it often rhymes. From the map-heavy politicking of Final Fantasy XII to the way the Mothercrystals forming the backbone of Valishthea’s geopolitical climate are explicitly related to the elements that make up the world (and an encroaching blight) like in Final Fantasy V, there’s no mistaking the family resemblance. Yet FFXVI is also a game where you can have your doggo companion knock an enemy spinning into the air for you to teleport-dash up to and slam back into the ground with a plunging sword strike.

CLASH OF THE TITANS