Final Fantasy 16 - PlayStation 5 - The Digital Foundry Tech Review

Final Fantasy 16 is a beautifully crafted, visually stunning series entry that arrives with gamers in a polished, bug-free state. John takes us through what makes this game so compelling in terms of its visuals, audio, environments and characters, plus there's everything you need to know about quality and performance modes in terms of image quality, frame-rates and everything else. Also: Square-Enix has indeed delivered a day one patch, and we've got analysis on whether it improves performance compared to the recently released demo.

00:00 - Introduction
02:00 - The New Generation
03:58 - Characters and Cutscenes
13:14 - The Environments of Final Fantasy 16
16:42 - Grape Analysis
17:51 - Shadows, Particles and Water Effects
21:10 - Performance Testing - Frame-rate and Image Quality
28:19 - Loading Times
29:11 - The Sound and Ending

[KellissonFelipe]

"Grapes per second" must become the unique quality measure for any new game.

[UserInterface]

12:45 FYI: as John mentions that turning off motion blur is not an option in the current, release version. But over the past weekend, Yoshi P mentioned (during the Japanese Pre launch livestream) they will add an option to “Turn Off” motion blur in an upcoming patch.

[NN]

The Grape segment was hilarious as an FFXIV player who was there for all the grape mocking during the Endwalker launch! I’m hesistant to watch much more to avoid spoilers though.

[White_tar]

Let's take a moment to appreciate John's "Ode to the Grapes of Final Fantasy". Top job sir.

[wezite]

They added a motion blur slider in an update today! You can set it from 0 to it's default setting of 5.

[Kmaitland]

Wonderful video. Do not apologize for the length. This is so well put together. Amazing work.

It's great to see you excited about a new release.

[ryan]

It’s never gets old listening to John talk about video games, just like Rich, he has a way of describing everything that’s so appealing to listen to and you can hear his passion for the game while also being able to critique the finer details.

[Darkangel]

720p - 1080p in performance mode 💀 truly next gen

[onesowngrief]

John, I was not expecting a section on the music alone and I can't say enough how much I appreciate that you included it for this particular game for the DF Tech Review. Definitely felt like a conscientious decision for fans of the series.

[mattmackie]

Run time was perfect, don't apologise. Great to witness somebody just loving a game and wanting to share it! Well done.

[chokedbybacklog]

Another fanboy monent for DF. Y'all keep ruining your credibility.

[jonRock]

If you guys don't want anything spoiled, just listen to the video, John describes everything well.

[Zeltor]

Yeah it's (sadly) a real feat these days to have close to no game breaking/major bugs in a game of this magnitude.
I salute the team, what a great effort!

[mitchboland]

How convenient. I was literally just thinking to myself wondering when DF would drop their review

[KontryBoy]

right on time with this one DF. It's shame performance modes are starting to not hit 60fps.... crazy times we are hearing about consoles running at 720p-1080p and struggling with fps... it's like we jumped back 2 generations

[WickedRibbon]

I absolutely adore John's DF Tech Reviews. The craftmanship of each video is remarkable.

[nitishaggarwal]

31:09 I am sure that I am gonna be dead by the level of goosebumps I am gonna get at this moment, soundtrack alone is some of the best thing I have ever heard in my life

[Vsevolod]

Wow! This video is an art in itself. Very enjoyable to watch like in the old times.

[gabor]

Imagine playing in 720p resolution in 2023....
If we continue this path, 60fps modes will run in 360p by the end of the generation...
Why is it so hard to optimize games? They cant blame the weak jaguar cpu-s anymore...

[JupiterJSPH]

I feel like Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake solidified that the series is no longer held back by technical limitations. These visuals were envisioned by the devs from the start and this is truly how they wanted the series to look.