Despite the team not intending to release a day one patch, Final Fantasy XVI still got one to address some issues, including wonky performance, but it seems like the patch did not improve performance at all, as the framerate still drops below the 40 FPS range at times as it did in the playable demo.
A new video comparing the game’s Quality and Performance modes put together by ElAnalistaDeBits confirms both modes’ resolutions and target framerates – 2160p, 30 FPS (from dynamic 1440p) and 1440p, 60 FPS (from 1080p) and how Quality mode increases the quality of multiple settings, such as shadow quality, anisotropic filtering, and post-processing effects. To keep the visual quality high, however, resolution can drop to 1080p in certain situations. More importantly, as mentioned before, the Final Fantasy XVI day one patch did little to address the performance issues seen in the demo, as resolution still drops below 40 frames per second in certain situations.
Despite these performance issues, Final Fantasy XVI is still an incredibly solid action role-playing game and a new standard for the genre, as highlighted by Kai in his review. The only thing holding the game back are the RPG trappings, which feel superfluous.
Final Fantasy XVI heralds in a new standard for Japanese role-playing games and while the RPG components themselves are limited by Square-Enix standards, it’s the narrative and gameplay that exceed all expectations. What begins with kingdom-wide subterfuge and destruction ends with a world forever changed and the player, as Clive Rosfield and Ifrit together, are the driving force to see it all through until the end.
Final Fantasy XVI launches tomorrow, June 22nd, on PlayStation 5 worldwide.
