The latest in the legendary series of Japanese RPGs, Final Fantasy XVI has a very different tone in both story and combat. And with an extensive story covering complex fictional political storylines, it can all be a little overwhelming. However, the good news is that it is final fantasy XVI comes with a range of settings that can help customize the experience to your liking and even make it a little easier to play.
Whether you want to tweak the game’s combats in your favor or want to make the story a bit cleaner, here are eight settings you should adjust.
Enable speaker names for subtitles
Final Fantasy XVI features plenty of characters and plot detail – so much so that there’s a special feature that lets you pause any cutscene with the PS5’s touchpad to look up characters and historical facts. But sometimes this “Active Time Lore” distracts a bit and doesn’t help the gameplay.
So if you’re having a hard time telling Wade and Tyler apart, I would suggest turning on speaker names in the captions settings. You can find this below System > Speech Settings > Speaker Names. Subtitles must of course be enabled for this to work.
Now not only can you see who is speaking during a cutscene, but the in-game banter is also accompanied by character names. Much better.
Graphics mode or framerate mode?
Final Fantasy XVI is a very pretty game, but these graphics come at the expense of overall performance. As with many modern console games, the settings give you a choice of prioritizing how pretty the game looks (graphics mode) or how fast and smooth the animations look (framerate mode). But which one is the best?
So, Digital Foundry has a full breakdown of FFXVI‘s visual presentation if you fancy a 35 minute deep dive. But I’ll give you the CliffsNotes.
For almost all applications You should use graphics mode. Not only does the framerate mode actually struggle to maintain a stable 60fps out of combat, but even when it does hit that, it sometimes comes at the expense of a low 720p resolution. 720p was common in the Xbox 360 era – and on the Switch – but I know you didn’t buy that 50-inch 4K TV just to have your PS5 output a 720p picture of all things.
Consider what kind of game this is: Final Fantasy XVI is an epic storytelling game that will amaze you with vistas and pretty graphics. Framerate mode results in noticeable texture pop-ins, reduces shadow quality, and delivers an overall blurrier image that just doesn’t please.
Yes, the framerate mode looks smoother in combat, but that’s really its only benefit. I would go for greater visual fidelity with graphics mode.
Make Final Fantasy XVI easier with its support modes
Many modern games offer ways to tweak the difficulty level, sometimes at very detailed levels. Final Fantasy XVI is no exception here. However, you won’t find all of these settings in the game’s actual “System” menu. Instead, some of the battle settings are customized with actual equippable items.
Go to the Gear & Eikons tab in the pause menu. Just below your weapons and armor, you’ll see three accessory slots under an icon that looks like a necklace. Here you equip Clive with accessories. Several accessories to start the game with help to adjust the difficulty of the game.
Final Fantasy XVI‘s Timely Rings
Final Fantasy XVI gives you five different rings (you can equip a maximum of three at a time) to make your battle easier.
The Ring of Timely Healing heals you automatically by automatically activating a potion when your HP gets too low. And don’t worry, it initially selects standard potions instead of high potions.
The Ring of Timely Dodge ensures that you automatically dodge incoming attacks. Normally you have to press R1 (standard control) to get Clive out of the way. But if you want the game to be able to handle it, this ring is for you.
The Ring of Timely Focus slows down time when you’re about to get hit. With this ring equipped, time will slow down when an attack is imminent and you’ll see a circular prompt telling you to press R1 to get out of the way. Note that this ring and the ring of timely dodge cannot be used together (the game prioritizes the focus ring if you try on both).
The Ring of Timed Strikes automatically triggers battle combos with just the press of a button. Final Fantasy XVICombat is based on executing combinations of melee attacks and spells, which requires different keystrokes at different times. But if you want to simplify that, you can use the Ring of Timely Strikes to simply mash Square to have Clive unleash various combos automatically.
The Ring of Timely Help. Clive gets a dog in Final Fantasy XVI named Torgal. And he’s a very good boy, but if you want to let him lead the fight instead of having to command him, the Ring of Timely Support puts Torgal on autopilot, allowing him to support you in battle without your intervention.
Change Final Fantasy XVIis the overall difficulty
If you’re here for the story and don’t want to bother with combat at all, toggle on the story-focused mode by going to System > Game Settings > Gameplay. Now the fight will be easier. Note that you can always adjust this setting later except during combat.
Combine the simpler gameplay of Story Focused mode with the Timely Rings for even easier game play.
Optimize the battle aim and camera
The fight starts pretty quickly Final Fantasy XVI However, if you want to tweak the feel of combat, there are two settings you should consider: Target Lock and Target Tracking.
you will find it target lock under System > Game Settingsbelow in the menu.
Aim Lock allows you to choose whether or not you want to target an enemy by tapping the aim button until you select a new one (similar to e.g. Dark Souls) or that targeting will stop as soon as you release the aim button. Try both options to get a feel for which one works better for you.
The other possibility, pursue targetcan be found at System > Camera Settings.
When Target Tracking is enabled, your camera will automatically rotate to focus on the closest targeted enemy. But here’s the thing: if you don’t feel a difference with the feature on or off, don’t lose your mind. The speed of combat and the fact that the camera will auto-focus anyway once you start attacking a creature means this is kind of a subtle take. I recommend turning on Target Follow to keep things feeling fast and focused in the heat of battle.
Watch the tutorials again
Worried you missed an important explanation of a game feature? Worry no more: In System > System Settings you will find it tutorial messages. With this, you can go through the game’s tutorials again in case you need a refresher.
Look at the audio settings
In addition to closed captioning, see System > Language Settings > Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired, Final Fantasy XVI has another method of displaying audio in visual form: Visual Warnings. You can find them in the same menu.
When this option is selected, waveforms of different colors (red for music, green for sound effects, blue for voices) are displayed on screen depending on which side of the stereo field they are coming from.
Final Fantasy XVI offers multiple control schemes
If the default control scheme in Final Fantasy XVI If you don’t like the configuration, select one of the other two preset configurations System > Controller Layout > Wireless Controller Layout.
If you’d like to keep your thumbs on the thumbsticks as much as possible, I recommend looking at the Type-B layout. This will bind melee and magic to R1 and R2, respectively. However, you still need to use the face buttons for dodging, jumping, and certain other abilities.
Still, some hold Type C to be the true key to mastering the game’s combo system.
With these settings you can easily make Final Fantasy XVI an even more fun game. Which ones are you likely to customize first?
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