Recent reviews by Caal

Close your eyes.
Come to me.
Feel all right.
Just dance with me all through the night.


...you feel warmth

Absolute masterpiece and my GOTY 2025.
This is beyond amazing what such a small developer team could achieve.

Looks like RTS is back on the menu, boys!

Screw China. Long live Paradox and their games.

Fantastic combat, art style, sound design and music. This game has a lot of potential.
Must try for Souls fans.

I was looking forward to this release, especially knowing that Yoshi-P is responsible for it. I know Yoshida for his achievements with FF14 and I'm not gonna lie. I was a fan. Mostly because of its storytelling. I really enjoyed my time in FF14, clocking more than 4,5k hours until Dawntrail was released. What could go wrong with a huge budget and an experienced team?

So here's my review after spending 105 hours with Final Fantasy 16.

The Good:

• Torgal – Because he's fluffy.
  
• Soundtrack – Never an issue with an FF game. Soken delivered.
  
• Voice-over – Nice cast, including Ben Starr, Ralph Ineson, and Neil Newbon. Probably the best English dubbing that FF has ever received.
  
• Active-Time Lore – Honestly, every story-heavy game should introduce this feature. I used it a lot when I was confused about new characters or specific terms.
  
• Main story – The story is alright; I would enjoy it way more if not for the terrible pacing.
  
• Characters – Clive, Cid, Joshua, Jill. There wasn't a single character that I disliked.
  
• Monster and boss design – I enjoyed how monsters and bosses were designed. They fit the world perfectly, in my opinion.

The Bad:

• Graphics – Some of the background textures look like they're from the PS3 or even PS2 era. I thought maybe the textures didn't load, but in the end, they were just very low resolution. There is also very noticeable texture glitching in the game. This game has some beautiful moments, but for the performance it's offering, this is not acceptable.
  
• Side story and pacing – While the game definitely has some great moments, for the most part, it's just boring. The bad pacing kills all the momentum gained from the main story. Especially dull side-quests and drawn-out dialogues are a problem.
  
• Progression – Values next to the gear are just... numbers. There is no feeling of getting stronger while crafting new gear. The best weapon in the game doesn't even give any passive skills (!!!).
  
• Quest rewards – The rewards in this game don't make sense at all. You will receive more Ability Points for a quest where you have to help kids put a SCALE together—which only requires talking to three NPCs (!)—than for killing a formidable foe that could be eight levels higher than you (looking at you, Svarog). This happens all the time and basically kills the fun from combat. Who thought this was a good idea?
  
• Too many cutscenes – This is more of an interactive video than an action game if we focus strictly on storytelling. Too bad. There were moments where I'd love to have some control (e.g., the ship scene with Barnabas) instead of just watching what's going to happen.
  
• No party management at all – You can give some orders to Torgal. Torgal is mostly strong in cutscenes. Which brings us back to no party management.
  
• Combat – Mashing one button most of the time. A lot of combat mechanics copied from FF14. Eikons are a nice addition, but they get boring pretty quickly, and you end up doing the same combos over and over. Some of the fights can be fun, but there's plenty of QTEs in the most important ones. Also, there are unskippable stages in fights, making enemies invulnerable even if you have dealt more than enough damage. Sounds like FF14, no?

The Ugly:

• Performance – Horrible optimization. I had heavy performance issues with DLSS enabled on 4070Ti with 12700K. FSR works way better, resulting in more stable and higher average FPS.
  
• Map design and lack of secrets – Zones are very restrictive. It's clear that developers wanted you to follow the specific path they designed. There are no secrets at all—no hidden chests, barrels, or bosses. There's no reward for exploration.
  
• Difficulty – There's no real difficulty in this game; it's like SE was afraid to make anything that could stop players from finishing it. I think the high % of people who got the achievement for beating the game confirms it. 'Final Fantasy' NG+ difficulty doesn't make it harder; instead, it just adds way more HP to the enemies, making them sponges. Yaawn. Some of the bigger fights in NG+ take 40-50 minutes. The only benefit of those long fights is that I was able to finish two audiobooks of Warhammer 'Horus Heresy'.
  
• Cutscene FPS lock – 30FPS lock in cutscenes is a joke (thanks to modders for fixing it!).

Summary:
FF16 had a good premise but failed to deliver it. There was a lot of potential lost to overblown writing, bad pacing, shallow combat, restrictive map design, too many cutscenes and lack of any difficulty. I don't agree with Yoshi-P that modern Final Fantasy games should be action-focused games. This is the wrong direction for new games in the series. Not everything has to appeal to the masses, and FF shouldn't sacrifice its identity trying to.
Bring back core and identity of Final Fantasy series. We don't need the best graphics but proper stories, combat with party management and awesome soundtrack. Let Final Fantasy be jRPG as it should be. SEGA and ATLUS prove that this genre hasn't died and people still want more.
In the end, this could have been a nice spin-off, instead of main title, if they had cut the boring side-quests and reduced the game's size. It's a shame that Yoshi-P and the team were working on it instead of delivering a proper FF14 expansion.
If you really want to play this game, wait for a heavy discount. Don't trust the demo, it shows only fun stuff while the rest of the game is just boring and tedious.
As a fan of the series I just can't recommend FF16.

Dome Keeper is a wonderful indie game. It reminds me of a game called "Motherload" that was made in technology that is now forbidden and forgotten - Adobe Flash. "Motherload" was available on MiniClip and I spent too much time on it when I was way younger. There's something satisfying in idea of digging and upgrading your equipment/base and mixing it with waves of enemies, where you have to defend your base - it's a perfect mix of gameplay.

Progression in Dome Keeper feels natural. There's plenty of stuff to unlock and ways you can finish a map.
Assignments (challenges) are balanced and fun to do. This game is really addicting, it's one of those "just one more" games. The music doesn't play often, but when it does, it perfectly matches the atmosphere.

It works like a charm on Steam Deck too!

Overall Dome Keeper gets a solid 9/10 from me.
If you're still on the fence, wondering if this is the game for you - just buy it! Support the developer; they fully deserve it. This is a game made clearly by passion, something that is hard to find nowadays in this industry.

I'm looking forward for more of their games, especially Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant aka PVKK.

Dosho, dosho!

One of the best games I have played, up till now. Storytelling is absolute top, combat is fluid and exploration gives pure joy. Question marks that you actually want to discover. This game is worth any money.

Burn the heretic
Kill the mutant
Purge the unclean!

China will grow larger