We are entering a weird age of gaming where under the table deals are most likely occurring without our knowledge. I am not one to say that Square and Sony have collaborated on an exclusivity deal that overtakes the industry. Sure, the hope is to drive people to purchase a console to play the latest title. But what Sony didn’t account for was the patience of PC gamers. Why buy a console for Final Fantasy XVI when you could instead play Dwarf Fortress for hours on end? Most importantly, why risk spending money on a game that doesn’t live up to the self-inflicted level of quality one should expect?
This brings me to the moment we are all here, huddled around the screen to see what it is that I think of this port of one of last year’s best games. If it seems like I am padding this out for no good reason, well, you’re right. To be honest here there isn’t much to discuss when it comes to my findings. It’s a game that runs rather well for the most part.
Yes, Final Fantasy XVI is still a good game. It still looks impressive. The flames that spewed out during the fight between Ifrit and Phoenix overworked my rig to the point of heating up my room as if i was right in the battle, delivering a level of temperature-based immersion I didn’t think I’d ever experience. While the sweat drips off my brow, I am eager to deliver words that express my satisfaction and very slight disappointment.
My PC rig has seen some changes as of late. An upgrade from the AMD Ryzen 7 5700G to the AMD Ryzen 7 5700x3D alone has created some uplift within speed, as it rightfully should have. I have 32GB of DDR4 RAM which is now what I would consider necessary for modern gaming, along with a 2TB Samsung NVMe SSD. The real surprise is how I tested this on both an AMD RX 7800 XT and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070; a first.
So, instead of isolating this to a single experience, I want to spread my findings between each graphics card. I have some general concepts and statements that carry onto both, so I will save those for after my GPU analysis. What I will preface my findings with is a singular statement: AMD is performing really well here, considering our goals of 60 fps but NVIDIA closes in on the ease of use.
AMD RX 7800 XT
While AMD in the past runs games rather well, it also has the potential of delivering disappointing performance. While I do appreciate AMD’s price to performance ratio, this is one of the few times where it might not pay off, but also, there are a few surprises.
AMD is really flexing its muscles here with the overall experience. I am happy to say that while the cost of GPUs are going upward, it’s nice to see this level of performance from what I would consider to be a mid-range graphics card.
First, I have to say that the game looks beautiful, visually aligning itself to the PlayStation variant. I honestly can’t see much of a difference in quality between the two besides the fact that my face is about two feet away from the screen.
Colorization looks fine. Textures look good. I can’t really say much when it comes to the stand-out bugs. I’ve seen less demanding games subject themselves to wild artifacting (when environments just don’t line up and glitch). Overall, Final Fantasy XVI delivers, but when I engage with AMD’s FSR 3 technology, the frame rate excels.
Disengaging V-sync and engaging FSR gave me frame rates beyond 120 fps on my monitor that tops off at 144 Hz. Gameplay was incredibly smooth, with a camera that whirled around Clive like a child who was given free reign over a bag of Sour Patch Kids. The odd moment came when cut-scenes popped in and played at 30 fps. I can’t say it is because of cinematic reasons as 24 fps seems to be the sweet spot for media playback.
That being said, I did have to play around with a few more settings. Chromatic aberration left a ghosting feel on the screen. Everyone’s face had a bit of an aura to it, like extended peach fuzz. Lowering motion blur and grain gave a clear view of the subject matter which was great! I barely saw a blemish afterwards.
Overall, Final Fantasy XVI delivers a great experience on AMD cards. It takes some time to dial in your settings and make some adjustments, but if you are familiar with that and enjoy playing around with the tools under the hood, you really can’t go wrong here.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
I can say a lot of similar things I already said here, but to be honest I am equally impressed with the performance of the 4070. It doesn’t seem to struggle all that much when I place the game in “ultra” settings with DLSS, which it automatically enables without me messing around with the settings. I didn’t have to touch anything, it just measured up my system and played along to my rig’s strengths. That is a rarity for me.
DLSS technology makes the game run smooth as butter while encapsulating an incredibly vivid image. To be honest, I can’t say that Final Fantasy XVI looks better on NVIDIA hardware than AMD, but I can say that it all comes down to ease of use here. I didn’t have to do nearly as much adjusting to the settings as I did with the AMD card. It was clear and smooth from the very start and that makes it quite difficult to demean in any way when we are talking about modern-day hardware, granted, the game still has a glaring issue that I will get into later.
As for raw performance, this is an interesting basket of facts. The GPU was running at 99% utilization with an average of 119 FPS at 1440p resolution. If it wasn’t for that utilization, I’d say that the game is well optimized. CPU performance hits an average of 35% utilization which makes sense, as this game is quite the graphical monster.
Conclusion
Overall, Final Fantasy XVI runs well enough for me to give it a big ole thumbs up. If you are running a mid-tier card like the 4070 you’re going to have a great time at 1440p and 1080p resolutions. Frame rate will fluctuate and it could produce a jarring experience. Overall though, I think Square did the bare minimum here when it came to bringing this game over to PC. It barely operates on the Steam Deck, so don’t bother trying it there.
Perhaps the biggest oversight for me is how the game doesn’t support the ultrawide 21:9 and 32:9 aspect ratios, something that a lot of other games support naturally these days. This explains why certain on-screen elements look out of center, because I had to download a mod to get the wider perspective. I’m hoping 21:9 support comes soon.
Besides that, if you haven’t played Final Fantasy XVI before, this is a great time to dive in and start hacking and slashing your way through foes. If you’re looking for what we thought about the story, mechanics, and overall view of the game then check out Alex’s review here! Otherwise, hit up the gallery to check out some screenshots taken from the RX 7800 XT!
