Despite being a role-playing game, Final Fantasy XVI shares quite a few similarities with character action games like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta, games where the player’s performance is scored depending on multiple factors, such as how much damage was received, how long a combo has been kept going, how quickly enemies have been defeated, and so on.
While the player’s performance in battle is not scored during combat scenarios played the first time, it is possible to play through them again in the game’s Arcade Mode, which can be accessed shortly after reaching Cid’s Hideaway by interacting with the Arete Stone. At the end of any stage in this mode, your performance will be scored, and to get an S rank, you will have to play in a certain way.
How to Get S Rank Consistently in Final Fantasy XVI Arcade Mode
Even though Final Fantasy XVI plays and feels a lot like the most recent entries in the Devil May Cry series, what usually earns a high score in the CAPCOM series doesn’t exactly guarantee an S in the Square Enix game. For starters, it doesn’t matter how long you take to defeat enemies, so you can take your sweet time and provoke enemies so as to evade their attacks and score some additional points. Torgal, and any other member of your party, however, will continue attacking them, so you cannot cheese your way to an S rank by just evading attacks over and over.
The key to obtaining S rank consistently in Final Fantasy XVI is to use advanced techniques and to do so, you will often have to use Eikon abilities. To learn which techniques any ability can unleash, put your cursor on any ability in the Abilities menu and press the triangle button. For example, by using Garuda’s Wicked Wheel and continuing the combo with regular attacks or other Eikon abilities that can be used in the air, such as Ifrit’s Ignition or Garuda’s Gouge once the ability launched the enemy in the air, you can score a lot of points.
Other abilities available in the first half of the game, such as Ifrit’s Will-o’-the-Wykes or Garuda’s Rook’s Gambit, score a lot of points as well, so make sure to use them as much as you can. For the first, for example, try activating the ability, then launch the enemy in the air using Torgal’s Savage to rack up hits without pushing the enemy away too much and score a ton of points. In case your best Eikon abilities are on cooldown, the Master forms of some basic techniques, such as Lunge and Downtrust, net a decent amount of points, as does Charged Lift, a special technique that launches knocked down enemies or airborne enemies into the air with a charged Magic shot, so make sure to use them while you wait for you Eikon abilities to become available again.
Using advanced techniques in Final Fantasy XVI is the best way to achieve S ranks consistently, but if you’re looking to push your score higher, then you will have to play at your absolute best to earn Accolades, which grant additional points if certain feats have been completed during a stage. These feats range from dealing massive damage while in Limit Break, parrying attacks, not getting damaged for the duration of an entire battle, executing magic bursts, precision dodges and punishing blows a certain amount of times, completing some boss-specific objectives, and so on.
Once you make some progress in the Final Fantasy XVI story, you will get more powerful Eikons, which will help Clive unleash some powerful techniques that will appear rainbow-colored on the interface, such as a fully charged Zantetsuken. While these techniques make getting S ranks easy in the standard Action-focused difficulty, using them properly will be required to get them in Ultimaniac mode, which is unlocked after completing the game once. Getting S ranks in this mode is the game’s ultimate challenge, and while you do not get any reward, mastering the combat system to achieve high scores is a satisfaction on its own that can make future playthroughs even more fun.
