Final Fantasy XVI is high up there as one of my absolute favorite games to come out in 2023. As divisive as the game’s radical gameplay re-imagining was amongst hardcore fans, the switch to a more hardcore Devil May Cry style action game worked for me (while I also understood the decry towards the game’s minimal, borderline anemic RPG elements), and Clive Rosfield’s emotional epic tale of redemption has stuck with me longer than many games this year.
It was a tale that left a profound impact on me by the time its credits rolled, with a definitive ending to the latest numbered entry in the long running, ever changing series. Considering how it left off, I was left wondering how Square-Enix and Creative Business Unit III would follow this up, especially when they revealed plans for two pieces of DLC after the fact.
Announced at the tail end of this year’s edition of The Game Awards and released immediately, Echoes of the Fallen, the first of the two planned DLC’s for the game (the second piece, the Leviathan themed Rising Tide, comes out during the Spring), provides a compact microcosm of everything that encompassed Square Enix’s latest offering. While not entirely essential, it was a nice return to a world I loved so much earlier this year, showcasing the title’s strengths and weaknesses in equal measure. If you thought Final Fantasy XVI was already a flawed gem, Echoes of the Fallen provides you 3-4 hours more of that.
Slight spoilers to follow
Set at the tail end of the main campaign and right before Clive’s fateful final battle at Origin, CBUIII pulled a Mass Effect 3 and sidestepped the game’s definitive ending to give us a meaty, elaborate side quest focused on the mystical, more sci-fi tinged precursor race “The Fallen.” When fragments of an artificial dark mother crystal start being distributed amongst Valisthea’s black market, Clive and his companions’ investigations lead them to learn more about the extinguished precursor race, and how said race’s decisions could lead the pathway towards a new future of humanity for Valisthea.
In typical Final Fantasy XVI fashion, Echoes of the Fallen continues the main game’s mix of semi-linear hub worlds broken up with the game’s Devil May Cry style combat encounters and its detailed, sometimes “exposition heavy” cut-scenes. The DLC is at its weakest early on where your early investigations make you backtrack through some of the same Rosalia environments you already traversed in the main story (and at the time where darkness has fallen on the world where the perpetual purple in the skies makes things look duller despite the stunning detail), and it throws in the heavy cut-scene focus to start you up.
One of the biggest issues of Final Fantasy XVI was its very uneven/wonky pacing as the game tried to balance its exciting high octane action with its story, lore, and world building. In the early hours of the DLC, the issues remain, and you may get antsy about when you can get to the exciting stuff.
Thankfully, Echoes of the Fallen is able to overcome its early pacing wonkiness once Clive and company enter the newly revealed Fallen tower. While similar in design to some other “Fallen” themed dungeons you traversed in the main story, the architectural detail of this tower, paired with the usual masterful Soken music, delivers the punch and spectacle that made the highs of Final Fantasy XVI so memorable this year. Better yet, the things that make this DLC sing are housed here. If you were someone that thought the game on its Normal difficulty lacked a sense of challenge (in-particular before you unlocked the game’s Final Fantasy mode), Echoes of the Fallen is the game’s answer to an endgame dungeon with so many enemies, from the rank and file to the larger mini-bosses, packing a bigger punch than the main game.
This Fallen tower absolutely throws the gauntlet at you, and, paired with some new trinkets that you find in this place, helping to slightly deepen the customization that some found simplistic from an RPG perspective in the main game, Echoes of the Fallen feels like a smart answer to feedback and a nice extension to the already excellent high octane combat system.
One of the high points of the main game were the epic boss battles, and Echoes of the Fallen delivers one of the best ones for the game. While it never gets “Kaiju” level like some of the main game’s most memorable Eikon battles, this massive enemy will absolutely push your mastery of the combat’s minutiae and challenge you in a way that the other bosses didn’t in the game’s normal mode. It definitely feels like the team over at CBUIII may have taken a few cues from this year’s Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon with the boss’s visual design, vicious attack patterns, and ruthlessness. In a way, they took criticism that the game wasn’t hard enough personally, and if you are yearning for a challenge, this one will be fun to beat, especially in the Arcade mode at its highest difficulties.
At only 3-4 hours, Echoes of the Fallen makes the most of the asking $10 price tag, and if what you wanted was another excuse to revisit the world outside its New Game+ and Arcade Mode, I feel this is a solid reason to return to this world. While some of the lows found in the main game are still here, the things that made the game special are still in top form here. In the end it’s just more Final Fantasy XVI, and any excuse I can get to get back to this world is fine by me. Now roll over, Rising Tide.
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