It was just the other day that I was watching a Digital Foundry video where they talked about Final Fantasy XVI on PC being leaked by an Nvidia driver update. Now, today, we got official confirmation from Square in the form of a video announcement and a playable demo. I’m curious if their hand was a little forced due to the leak. A random Monday announcement with little fanfare seems a bit off for one of their flagship games like this. Regardless of how they chose to announce it, we won’t have to wait long, as the game will be released just under a month from now, on September 17. Until then we have the demo to play!
The demo is the same one we got on PlayStation 5 last year before the game’s initial release. There are two playable scenarios. The first one starts at the beginning of the game, where you play as a young Clive, and it culminates with a massive Eikon battle between Phoenix and Ifrit. For the second part, which you play by choosing Eikon Challenge on the menu, you control an older Clive with more Eikonic powers. In it, he and Cid are breaking into Caer Norvent to rescue some prisoners and ultimately to face off against Benedikta in a pretty awesome battle.
I’m somewhat of a layman when it comes to the intricacies of graphics technology, but I know what looks and feels good to me. So, I’ll keep things very basic for now, and we can all look forward to Digital Foundry doing a more in-depth analysis of the demo soon. The demo played incredibly well! Last year, I think I played most of the PS5 version of the game in Graphics mode, which is 4K at 30 fps. So, being able to play it on my PC, still in 4K, on Ultra settings, and being able to hit 240 fps is pretty wild. Keep in mind that I have a GeForce RTX 4080, so temper your expectations based on the hardware you have in your machine. The gameplay sequences ran buttery smooth (did I really just write that?). Even during the Eikon battle, which dropped frames like crazy on PS5, the framerate seemed very smooth. The only minor stutters that I saw at all were in cutscenes. And to my eyes, the cutscenes also seemed to be at a slightly lower, or at least awkwardly paced framerate. It will be interesting to see if DF says the same. There was also some kind of graphical glitch occasionally when scenes were changing. I don’t remember this from the PS5 version, but sometimes, when the scene changes, there would be a couple of garbage frames before the new scene appears. It was very subtle but still noticeable and happened a few times. It could simply be something that will get cleaned up in the final launch code next month.
Either way, it played incredibly well, and I was very impressed. For a game that I thought was already one of the most visually impressive “next-gen” games to get even better is something we should applaud. I’ve been itching to play the main story again ever since I played through the DLC earlier this year. Maybe this is the universe telling me that now is the time. Did you play the demo yet? What did you think? Did you have a similar or different experience to mine?