The Stellar Blade demo has been out since March 29, and if you manage to beat it, your save data will carry over to the full game when it launches as a PlayStation 5 exclusive on April 26. One thing I was curious about was the “Skin Suit,” an outfit for protagonist Eve that basically has her traversing the world in the nude and makes the game way more challenging. Surprisingly, at least in the demo, it’s an incredibly easy thing to unlock, so since I just learned how to get it, I figured I’d teach you how to get it, too. Sharing is caring, after all. – Levi Winslow Read More
I’ve finished Final Fantasy XVIand am now working on 100 percenting it, including beating the game a second time on the New Game+ “Final Fantasy” mode difficulty. For all the game’s flaws, of which there are plenty, there’s just so much it does that I just can’t get enough of. From the music and environments to the heart-stopping Eikon battles, Square Enix’s latest action-RPG is chock full of things both big and small, in your face and very subtle, that make it, for me at least, one of the most memorable Final Fantasy games in nearly two decades.
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Released on June 22 as a timed PlayStation 5 exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI tells the story of the orphaned prince Clive and his (not so merry) band of outcasts as they seek to overthrow the powers that be and install a new, more equitable world order. It trades the turn-based, menu-heavy RPG customization the franchise is known for for chunky action combat and cinematic spectacle that’s constantly cranked to 11. And it works. Mostly. Here are some of our favorite things we can’t stop thinking about from Square Enix’s latest blockbuster adventure.
Clive’s slutty little waist
If we’re talking about little things in Final Fantasy XVI worth spotlighting, I think it would be a crime to not include Clive Rosfield’s slutty little waist. Who gave that man permission to wear a blood-red corset and just show off what he’s working with at all times? Oh, you’re sad about your brother’s death? I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of your loud-as-fuck fit. Criminal. Lock him away. — Kenneth Shepard
The anime flexes
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Spectacle is at the heart of Final Fantasy XVI, and that includes using its Kaiju Eikon fights to recreate some classic anime moments. An early sequence where Ifrit punches the crap out of Phoenix is an homage to Neon Genesis Evangelion, and Eikons can regrow entire limbs like in Attack on Titan. The development team took almost every opportunity afforded by the game’s central premise and used it to go berserk (speaking of which).
When the music hits
Final Fantasy XVI’s soundtrack was composed by Masayoshi Soken. It’s very subtle in parts compared to some earlier scores in the series, but goes very hard in others. Most satisfying of all is how elegantly it shifts mid-battle to take advantage of choreographed quick-time cinematic moments. “To Sail Forbidden Seas” is the name of the song that plays during all of the Eikon battles, and the mood ebbs and flows in perfect sync with the battle, as you go from hacking away at the stagger gauge to unleashing a flurry of cooldown abilities while the boss is vulnerable. The track builds, brings in the chorus, and then reaches another level when the cinematic clashes begin before settling back down again when it’s back to the main combat. Final Fantasy boss fights have always sought to be dynamic and exciting even when turn-based, but XVI takes it to a whole new level. Especially during the Titan fight.
Clive’s Wall of Memories
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
At a certain point in the game, you start amassing keepsakes from your adventures, little remembrances of people you’ve helped or things you’ve accomplished. I like this because you don’t get anything for them except the keepsakes themselves. They don’t provide you with any combat bonuses or stat boosts. They’re just keepsakes, a little reminder that what matters most of all in the world of Final Fantasy 16 isn’t your strength stat or how good your bracers are, but the connections Clive forms with others.—Carolyn Petit
The Torgal toss
Speaking of epic boss fight moments, holy hell Torgal is out of his mind. I pointed at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio when he grabbed Benedikta in his jaws and swung her across the battle arena after she beat the crap out of Clive. We’ve moved so far beyond “Can you pet the dog?” If your game’s canine friend can’t go Super Saiyan on a demigod, then what’s even the point? Final Fantasy VIII’s Sant’ Angelo di Roma walked so Torgal could run.
The way the Mothercrystals disintegrate
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
A lot of massive crystals get destroyed in Final Fantasy XVI, and every time it’s as satisfying as watching an ice sculpture get sent through a wood chipper. Probably not great for Valesthea’s air quality, but beautifully effervescent nonetheless.
No clipping
Sometimes a game’s graphics are so good you don’t even notice all the ways in which they’re incredible. Final Fantasy XVI’s intricate costumes and long hairstyles are particularly notable for how rarely, if ever, they clip through one another, let alone the environments. Clive in particular has a long dark mane and a long dark cape, and they never get caught on one another or stray objects across all of the environments, even when the rebel sellsword is vaulting over fences or climbing up ledges.
How gracefully Clive gets out of people’s way
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
In keeping with Final Fantasy XVI’s theme of providing the occasional ridiculous level of attention to small details, I can’t get over the automatic animation Clive goes into every time you’re about to steer him into another NPC. Getting snagged on random characters in the world has been a staple in older games in the series, but here you’d have to go out of your way to steer into one. And even still, Square Enix’s developers decided to add a bespoke animation precisely for those rare occasions, just to keep things flowing naturally and avoid the the game-y-ness of the game coming through.
The sound of the XP screen
Whether it’s the rounding up of the numbers like a slot machine or the clink, clink, clink of new gil and items getting added to your inventory, there’s something magical about Final Fantasy XVI’s minimalistic battle results menu. At first I hardly noticed it, but with every battle the tiny dopamine hit of seeing and hearing Clive rack up points wrapped its tendrils around my lizard gamer brain.
The scenery
Final Fantasy games are known for being beautiful, but I can’t get over the muted extravagance of some of Final Fantasy XVI’s environments. The hyper-realistic style almost masks how much is actually going on, whether its giant kingdoms in the background or dense forests thick with different types of foliage. Except for the deserts, which look like how my brain remembers every other Final Fantasy desert.
Summons fighting
Screenshot: Square Enix / Kotaku
Shiva, Ifrit, Odin and Bahamut have been blowing up stuff since 1990’s Final Fantasy III, with summon animations that got more and more over-the-top in each new entry. Final Fantasy XVI is the first to render those scenes as if they were just part of the underlying fabric of the game rather than rewards doled out sparingly. My favorite is when, in one scene early on, Bahamut and Odin stare each other down from across a battlefield as their two kingdoms’ armies collide. It’s presented so nonchalantly that it’s easy to forget just how incredible it is to play a Final Fantasy that never flinches from showing you everything.
Uncle Byron
Clive is great and Cid is excellent. I love Gav too. There’s no shortage of great (mostly male) characters in Final Fantasy XVI, but let’s give it up for Uncle Byron, who thinks Clive is an imposter until they recite a scene from a play they used to perform together years ago at family parties. He’s a coward but throws his vast reserves of gil into the rebellion, wants to make amends for past failures, and never misses a chance to talk a big poetic game like he just sprang out of a Sir Walter Scott novel. The developers at Square even made sure to keep him animated behind the bar guzzling down beer at the inn during an early brawl in the Dhalmekian Republic.
THE HEAVENS—With smoke and the acrid smell of charred cherubim filling the skies, celestial sources confirmed Wednesday that the Lord God Almighty accidentally burned down heaven this morning when His malfunctioning curling iron started an electrical fire. “I was just putting some nice, loose beach waves in My hair when that piece of shit started sparking, and before I knew it, the towels, the curtains, and the entire Promised Land went up in flames,” said God, whose hair was only half-curled, adding that He was tempted to smite the manufacturers of the cheap curling iron He bought from Shein. “It was so embarrassing when the firefighters showed up, and there I was standing outside the Pearly Gates like an idiot in my bathrobe. On top of everything else, I had 40 or 50 billion eternal souls in there that were burnt to a crisp and can’t be replaced. Some Everlasting Kingdom this turned out to be, huh?” God added that until He could find a new home on high from which to gaze upon His creation, He’d probably just crash with His old buddy Satan down in hell.
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If you, like me John Walker, are still fathoming your way through the lower echelons of Marvel Snap, there’s a good chance there are cards you’re clinging on to because they were working so well for you. However, you’re now starting to lose more often, wondering what went wrong. The answer is: Kill your darlings.
With the help of my colleague Zack Zwiezen—who has been playing the game for some time now—we’ve come up with a list of cards that you might want to cut from your decks.
Now, let’s be clear: Neither of us is saying these cards are totally useless, or that keeping them in your deck is always a bad idea. It’s just, they’re the ones that felt so good early on that you might not have been able to bring yourself to acknowledge their weaknesses, and are holding you back from experimenting with more interesting combinations. Be bold, be brave, and let these babies go.
And remember you can always add them back later if you experiment too much and end up with a stinker deck! Anyway, let’s start cutting some cards!
Quicksilver
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
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As Kotaku has previously broken down, Quicksilver was developer Second Dinner’s brilliant solution to entirely removing the concept of mulligans from their deckbuilding card game. Guaranteeing a 1-cost card in your hand at the start of every game ensures you can always play in the first round, every time, and add 2 power to the board right away. Which, at first, felt vital. Except, the more you play, the more you realize that being able to play in the first round isn’t actually all that important.
Chances are, you’re not going to be placing down anything game-changing that first turn. And indeed by not playing in round one, you fend off other 1-cost cards like Elektra. You can even obnoxiously opt out of playing a 1-cost you might have in your hand in Round 1, just so you can play two of them more tactically in Round 2. Again, for example, Elektra!
And, as we’ll get to below, decks that opt for as many 1-cost cards as possible will get increasingly weak as you climb the ranks, meaning Quicksilver’s lack of any further abilities quickly makes him more of a burden than a boon.
Uatu
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first stumble upon Uatu, he feels like a secret hack, a card offering you special insight unavailable to anyone yet to find him. His ability to show you the properties of unrevealed locations feels like something that lets you plan ahead and make psychic moves your opponent can’t predict. And, to some extent, on some level, he sort of does.
Except, that won’t happen nearly often enough to justify Uatu taking up a valuable slot in your 12-card deck. The issue lies in the number of conditions that need to be right for him to actually prove helpful. Rather obviously, you need the luck of drawing him early enough to work. Unless you get him in the first or second round, Uatu’s ability is pretty useless. Secondly, you need to be playing a game with locations where prior knowledge is actually of use.
So many locations have properties where foreknowledge is of very little value. Finding out that when it reveals you’ll get a random card added to your hand, a random card taken from it, or a 12-power card added to both sides…it’s very rare that this will be vital information to you. Yes, there are absolutely circumstances where it’s great, where knowing each card will get 5+ power when played there means you can load up and dominate where your opponent might not know to. But does that happen frequently enough for Uatu to remain a vital card? Really, no.
Hulk
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
This one is hard. But listen: There are better and more interesting ways for a big finish. Hulk’s there from the start to give you that satisfaction of playing a ridiculous 12-power card on those Pool 1 bots. But he’s baby food, and you’re ready for solids.
Sure, you’ve nothing else in your deck that offers that much power. It’s simple logic. But Hulk’s simplicity is the issue. Using up all your energy in Round 6 on one card that does nothing other than add a bunch of power means you’re missing out on much more fun big finishes. Never mind that Shang-Chi, available from Collection Level 222, can obliterate him with his “Destroy all enemy cards at this location that have 9 or more Power.”
But there are so many cards that do more interesting things in the final round. Like Odin, who adds 8 power, but also refires all the On Reveal abilities of the other cards at the location. That means you can see White Tiger putting out another 7-power card onto another location, bringing her total contribution to 15, while at the same time retriggering Gamora’s additional +5 power if the opponent plays a card there. That puts Gamora up to a total of 17, even without taking into account a possible third card at the location, just playing Odin has increased our power by 20. Take that, Hulk.
America Chavez
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
When you first get this card you might be excited. America is a 6-cost/9-power card that always shows up on turn six, which is usually the last turn of most Marvel Snap games. And yeah, it’s nice knowing a powerful 9-power card is definitely going to show up at the end of your match. But this also means she’s not hanging around in your hand, meaning she can’t get buffed or randomly tossed into the field early on.
And while adding 9-power at the end of a match can be useful, you’ll quickly encounter games as you rank up where 9-power just isn’t enough to win back a zone or lock something down. Worse, America has no special abilities beyond showing up on turn 6. So, like Quicksilver, she shows up and doesn’t really do anything. And unlike the Hulk who is very strong, America is only sort of strong. In a specific deck built around buffing, she can work, but there are better 6 and even 5-cost cards to swap in instead.
Domino
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Let’s just toss this on here too, while we are talking about America Chavez and Quicksilver. Like those cards, Domino has a unique ability that means she is guaranteed to end up in your hand on turn two. And as a 2-cost/3-power, she seems useful as a follow-up to Quicksilver on turn one. And early on, you can definitely win with Domino. But eventually, you’ll need to get over these cards.
It’s hard, I know, but while giving them up means you give up the consistency of always knowing what’s coming on turns one, two, and six, you are also giving up three slots in your small 12-card deck to characters with no other purpose. They don’t buff, boost, move, kill, destroy, or do anything useful like that. Again, in certain decks, these cards can be useful. But there are just so many better cards that you could use instead of Domino, Quicksilver, and America. Say goodbye to consistency and hello to chaos. It’s the Marvel Snap way.
Mantis
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
Mantis, like the other Guardians of the Galaxy-related characters, has a reveal ability that pops when your opponent plays a card in that location on the same turn it’s played. But unlike Gamora, Star-Lord, or Rocket, Mantis doesn’t get a power boost, instead drawing a card from the opposing player’s deck. This is fun and chaotic, which we support! Snap is more fun when things are hard to predict and wild. But this becomes far less useful in most situations pretty quickly.
The number of times people play Mantis, get a card, and then never use that card because it doesn’t sync up with their deck’s synergy is high. And that’s if your opponent plays a card that turn and you guess the location right. If you don’t do that, then Mantis is a crappy 1-cost/2-power paperweight just begging to be killed by Elektra or worse, left there with no way for you to remove it, taking up valuable real estate. So, yeah, ditch Mantis. And if you are screaming “Well, she is a part of my Zoo Deck!” right now, here’s more bad news…
Zoo Decks
Image: Marvel / Second Dinner / Kotaku
The “Zoo Deck” was certainly one of the most popular meta decks of Snap’s early days, but in the face of the more common addition of Killmonger to players’ decks, it’s now proving a liability.
A Zoo Deck is a community-given name for decks that put together a lot of low-cost cards, especially 1-cost cards, which often have animal art on them. (Not often enough to justify the name, but that’s the name they’ve gotten anyway.) Advocates celebrate that they allow you to play multiple cards in later rounds, surprising players who rely on hefty 5 and 6-cost cards, like some sort of cheeky rascal scampering between the angry giant’s legs. Except, because of Killmonger, they’re pretty much useless.
Killmonger does appear to be an incredible OP card, although he can only be picked up by players who’ve reached Collection Level 462. At just 3-cost, with 3 power, it’s a card that can be played from round 3 onward, and devastatingly takes out every single 1-cost card from the board. Yours and theirs. And people in Pool 2 are reporting seeing it showing up a lot. The effects are brutal. Oh, and Zoo Decks can also get beat badly by a Scorpion, which lowers the attack power of all the cards in your hand by one, which can easily cost you a close match when most 1-cost cards are low in power. So yeah, Zoo Decks are fun…but not worth it later on.
