Final Fantasy XVI marks a return with a vengeance. Clive Rosfield’s journey dropped in full last week after its demo went live after the Square Enix presentation. We’ve been playing through it a decent bit and have a couple of important tips and reminders for those just getting started.
Writer’s Note: Minor, non-plot spoilers
Side Quests with Plus Signs (+) Unlock Something
Clive’s story has some types of quests, namely different side quests. You’ll notice two different icons for side quests, despite their similar green markers. One has exclamation points, the other has plus signs.
The latter gives you various things. Chocobo mounts, healing item potency, etc. So, whenever you have a choice between side quests, know your math symbols to get more functional rewards.
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You Can Respec to Your Heart’s Content
Respec: to reset your abilities and refund the costs originally spent on said abilities. Final Fantasy XVI lets players respec with no string’s attached. Players can simply respec one of Clive’s skills or they can respec all of his skills.
This comes in especially handy when you’ve unlocked later Eikons. Not only can you refund abilities you have buyer’s remorse over, you can refund all abilities for Eikon’s you’re not using. That said, if you max out an Eikon’s ability, you can slot it with another Eikon.
For example, I maxed out one of Garuda’s main abilities, Rook’s Gambit, and slotted it with Ramuh for trophy hunting purposes.
You Can Pet Torgal
Yes, you can per the dog. Just walk up to Torgal, hold X, and dispense lovings. There is a trophy for doing this five times.
Active Time Lore Lets You Stay Up to Date
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Final Fantasy XVI realizes two things: it has a lot of lore and politics to sift through. To help players keep up with both, you have the Active Time Lore feature. During major cutscenes, press pause, and then press the touch pad. You’ll get three to six different lore entries for the related characters, places, and concepts to the scene.
Additionally, if you want to look back on the whole picture, find Tomes around the Hideaway. Tomes is the base historian, who chronicles all details you’ve discovered during your time playing the game. Each entry in Tomes’ library has related articles, meaning you can go down a massive rabbit hole about the continents of Storm and Ash.
Many Things Don’t Immediately Unlock
Clive’s journey features many excellent skills and side missions. However, expect to put a lot of time in before you can access them.
There are a couple of time jumps throughout the story, one of which unlocks many of these features. That jump in particular doesn’t occur until well after ten hours in the game.
So if you feel like you’re missing something or have trouble finding a talked about feature, you honestly might need to just keep playing.
There is a Photo Mode
I didn’t realize this until I hit the halfway point on the game. When you open the menu, press the touch pad to open the game’s simple yet functional photo mode.
