Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide
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Critic Reviews for Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide
Final Fantasy XVI says goodbye with The Rising Tide, a new dose of spectacle that will surely please the defenders of the sixteenth installment, but that falls far short of the expectations generated.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide is settled with a story too short in a new area of great beauty, new characters and a leviathan that is the best of the expansion. The combat shines again in an expansion that again makes the same mistakes and successes as the base game and its first DLC.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The Rising Tide may not offer anything new or novel to Final Fantasy XVI, but it does continue its streak of incredibly polished and fun gameplay. The story is a nice cherry on top of the main adventure, and the Karios Gate mode will keep you coming back for more.
Good DLC should pull you back into the game’s world. Final Fantasy XVI’s DLC sort of achieves this goal. You want to spend more time there, but the version of the world on offer feels a bit bleak. Maybe this is just the ‘end of days’ vibe that permeates the final chapter. Perhaps I’m just cursed with knowledge about these characters and their ultimate fates. Either way, the actual tangible content is mostly pretty fun. Yes, the sidequests are a bit dull, and I wish the main quest was a bit longer. And while I don’t care about the plight of Leviathan and his Dominant, the ensuing battles are a blast. Plus, there’s a boatload of postgame content to dive into. Though the Rising Tide DLC doesn’t quite hit the same story highs as the main game, that gameplay is still tons of fun.
Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide is a great expansion to an excellent action RPG, offering up one of the game's most intriguing and considered chapters. With yet more memorable boss battles, an emotional storyline, and some downright stunning environments, it's the worthy sendoff that Clive and company deserve.
Final Fantasy XVI is a fantastic game from start to finish, which manages to combine the classic structure of the series with a combat system focused on action and customization. The Rising Tide is the perfect complement to this experience, and although this marks the end of this chapter in the history of one of my favorite video game series, I can't wait to see how Square Enix takes everything that worked here and expands these concepts in Final Fantasy XVII, or in a sequel to Clive and Joshua's adventure.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide is an excellent continuation of everything that made the base game great: excellent battles, a plethora of options in battle, and most importantly, strong characters.
Knowing the ending of FFXVI, The Rising Tide doesn’t change Clive’s outcome or add a meaningful impact to the world to warrant an emotional introspection like the main game’s story. Instead, it adds additional power to Clive’s Eikonic skillset, making him appropriately powerful for postgame content that will assuredly punish players and test their might in Final Fantasy Mode. It might be a weirdly timed expansion, but it adds enough meat to the core gameplay to encourage replaying.
