Final Fantasy XVI

Unlike many game franchises, the great thing about mainline Final Fantasy games is that each stands fully and completely on its own without any need for players to be familiar with their predecessors. There's no exception for Final Fantasy XVI. It's a complete story with an entirely original cast of characters set in a new world, and it features innovative game mechanics that everyone, regardless of experience, will need to learn from scratch. That's not to say there aren't lots of little Easter eggs and homages to earlier games that returning players will enjoy -- they'll notice clever little musical reprises, characters with familiar names, and mythological creatures that have carried through the entire series -- it's just that new players will have no discernible disadvantage when they jump in. Much like its main narrative theme, this is an egalitarian game.

Players new to the series are bound to be wowed by what they encounter. The world Square Enix has built is intricate and sophisticated, filled with scores of important characters, each with their own motivations, ambitions, and relationships that fit like puzzle pieces into the broader story. It's so complex that players have been given several lore-parsing systems -- such as a tome master in Clive's hideaway who keeps what is essentially a world encyclopedia -- to help keep track and make sense of it all. Beyond the satisfying storytelling is a real-time battle system that takes a while to master but turns out to be very rewarding as Clive slowly learns dozens of incredibly powerful abilities and moves that allow him to make short work of feebler foes and enact clever strategies to stagger and whittle down the health bars of bigger baddies. The main boss battles -- which often pit pairs of giant magical entities known as Eikons against each other -- are jaw dropping set pieces that can result in the destruction of armies, towns, and, in one case, an entire mountain. The sense of power being wielded and released in these epic battles is almost tangible. Indeed, Final Fantasy XVI lives up to the series' reputation for saga and spectacle, and RPG fans old enough to handle its adult themes and intense visuals will surely be delighted.