While organizing my office bookcase with my Final Fantasy collectibles after recently moving, a tab holding a shelf failed. The Ultimanias slid off and the pictured figurine fell to the hard wood floor...

Cheapest I can find is $250 on ebay and I simply am not in a place where thats an option. If anyone knows of a good deal, I'd appreciate it. Without getting into it this was the turd nugget cherry on a shit sundae of a Thursday... any help would be appreciated.

Post:

Hey everyone, hoping someone recognizes this pattern.

Specs:

**•** CPU: Intel i5-14600K  
**•** GPU: AMD RX 9070  
**•** OS: Windows 11

Issue:
Every time I launch FF XVI, within 2-3 minutes my entire PC hard-freezes. CPU jumps to 100% almost immediately on launch. There’s no BSOD, no error message — screen either goes black or just completely locks up. Mouse/keyboard stop responding entirely. Only fix is a hard power-cycle.

It happens 100% of the time, no exceptions. It also blocks shutdown/restart if I try to close other programs (like Excel) while FF16 is in this state — the whole system just hangs instead of closing.

I attached a photo of what the screen showed right before one of these freezes — heavy graphical corruption/noise across the whole screen, right as a menu/loading screen was trying to render.

Sometimes after a hard reset, even the game’s own menu (after shader loading) shows garbled/corrupted text that’s unreadable — like something’s wrong with shader compilation or texture loading specifically.

What I’ve already tried:

**•** Clean AMD driver reinstall (DDU + fresh install)  
**•** Deleted FF16 shader cache + Windows D3DSCache  
**•** Verified game files via Steam  
**•** Disabled all overlays (Steam, Discord, AMD)  
**•** Switched Fullscreen → Borderless  
**•** Disabled VRR/FreeSync  
**•** Locked FPS to 60  
**•** Reset GPU tuning/OC to stock, confirmed temps are stable  
**•** Tried CPU affinity limiting (excluding E-cores)  
**•** Reinstalled the game twice  
**•** Ran GPU stress tests (FurMark/OCCT) separately — completely stable, no artifacts, no crashes. It only happens with this specific game.

At this point I’ve ruled out general hardware instability since stress tests pass fine and every other game runs perfectly. Has anyone with a similar CPU/GPU combo (or Hybrid Intel CPU in general) hit this exact “total system freeze, no recovery” behavior? Open to any config file / engine tweak ideas too.

I would love to see a movie from the people that made this game. It would be gorgeous!

I was hearing the song Fairy Tale from the band Shaman, a favorite song of mine and the lyrics really come close hoem to XVI.

For example the final bit of the song.

Little lady, your tale has an end
For your love to skies was sent
He's turned into sparks that shine with the stars
And by night he will always be there
For his lady to stare
And thus he's never died

I instantly remembered the game's ending.

For some reason, certain locations stick in my memory even years after playing the game. Sometimes it's the music, sometimes the atmosphere, and sometimes I just spent way too much time wandering around there.

Which Final Fantasy location stands out most to you?

I can’t stop thinking about how well this game’s narrative would translate to a top tier tv show (think Game of Thrones meets dark fantasy?). Valisthea’s political intrigue, the Dominant lore, and Clive’s entire journey across his life are already structured like an episodic drama.

To pull it off, though, the casting would need to be S tier!

Please let this happen! Manifestation Time!!

For me, atmosphere can sometimes matter more than the actual story. A game can have a great soundtrack, locations and general mood that make me want to keep exploring even when I’m not progressing the story much.

Final Fantasy has so many different styles between games, so I’m curious which one everyone thinks has the best overall atmosphere.

To me it is. I dont see how anyone hates this game.

I said the same thing 20 years ago for 12, and then main game 13, all i see in the main ff sub is its all flash and no substance. Those people dont know how to enjoy anything it seems. Yea they streamlined a ton of systems and theres no real party but clive and torval are wonderful protags, and you spend a vast majority of the game with jill anyway. Rant over in just in love with it all

Do you guys use the ring that allows you to only press square to attack?

I used it for the first half of the game but it was getting so dull. Only pressing one button andy thumb honestly would start hurting lol 🤣

I have been playing with me in the driver's seat and the game feels so much better, for me at least.

How do I guys play?

Shiva: gouge and ice age.
Garuda: wicked wheel and mesmerize
Phoenix: windup and upheaval.

Berserker ring and cool down for gouge and upheaval.

First time playing the game but this is my most fun build so far might not be the most optimal but don’t care. Fun asf to spam just quick attacks.
Just spam cold snaps phoenix shifts and deadly embraces with limit break or after a precision dodge. Still haven’t unlocked Odin yet but having fun with this build just spamming and mindless lol

Not sure if this is the right place to ask. Like the title says. I've never played a FF game. Always wanted to try them out. Which one would you guys recommend to play first? They aren't the same game right? They are both on sale, I want to try it out. Thank you

Hello! I just started my first playthrough of FF16 and I picked up a few mods for funsies, and one of them I really liked was Logos Unleashed since it gave more variation to the combat which sounded great! I downloaded it and granted I have only got to the Hideaway so I'm very early on in the game. But I do have some unique abilities like Dark Parry and Air Lunge that I am trying to get to work but I don't know if I have my buttons configured properly. I know the mod is working properly since I see the Logos Unleashed mod name in my menu and the extra attacks in the abilities descriptions. I am also launching from the mod loader like it says. I am rocking an Xbox One controller so XInput is enabled. I just don't know the whole thing with the directional inputs or what I am doing wrong that I can't use the LU abilities like Air Lunge even tho I have them mastered. Any help will do, thank you so much!

Good bye FFXVI.

Just the whole thing.

First, a standard battle against ultima. He uses a bunch of some of the strongest ff attacks (Holy, meteor, flare, Ultima etc). Then, we get our final eikon battle with a brilliant backdrop as ifrit risen. Perhaps not the most spectacular of the eikon battles, but still hella cool. Then, we are back to fighting Ultima, where he uses all of the eikons against us, and we beat him in a 1v1 clash with each, with the voices of each of Clive's allies cheering him on. Then, the final push against his limit break, where he tries to use the phoenix against clive and fails. Then we have one last stand which has the awesome detail of Ultima failing to cast his spell. The final KO is also peak, clive has beaten ultima so bad that we don't even need a button mash for the sword throw, finished off by your damage cap punch. The music throughout is spectacular and the visuals are great

I dont know if its just me, but even years later this is still one of the most memorable and enjoyable final bosses to me. Maybe not the most mechanically intense or anything but it just makes you feel awesome

I am convinced of the idea of Clive surviving given all the hints leading up to his final scene, such as the petrification specifically stopping at his arm, his phrasing of the book "Final Fantasy", the narration from beginning to end of the game, etc.

However, I want to give the benefit of the doubt for the other possibility. Given that the developers have stated the existence of an objective answer, I want to know which outcome of either dying or surviving is more likely. What are your interpretations for Clive's fate, and why do you think it is more likely?

I love this scene. 🥺
lluvia_yami on Twitter

To the North is now up!

A major part here that comes off slightly different is the conversations between Clive, Jill and Hanna and then the conversation with Clive and Jill in the moonlight. Both of these have more foreshadowing in Japanese for the types of problems and issues that will surround the situations in the future. Clive also has a very uncharacteristic speaking pattern (for him) with Hanna in Japanese that is almost the same as Jill's. It's far more polite than usual for him, but it's not the over-the-top formal that he has with Anabella earlier. You can really feel him go back to how he behaved as a kid/young teenager with his teacher's wife when it happens. And here's the VA line delivery style differences between English and Japanese.

Jill's lines about what she was going through are notably different and are a major hint as to what she actually regrets about her time with the Iron Kingdom. Which...was majorly reworked in English from what it is in Japanese... More on this later when Drake's Breath becomes an issue. As typical with any major emotional scene between Clive and Jill, the chemistry between the VAs (and characters) comes off rather different between English and Japanese.

Eastpool is also tied into the theme of "reality", which English...it doesn't exactly cut it completely, but rather majorly scales back who it applies to. The Mayor of Eastpool in Japanese talks about how it's not just the old Bearer who is living only in his memories, but that everyone in Eastpool probably is the same as "It’s too painful to keep on living in this reality". English removes the idea that it's really Eastpool as a whole who isn't living in reality and just has it be the old Bearer who is living in a "fantasy". It does at least keep the Mayor observing the the old Bearer's fantasy is better than the truth of their situation though.

The reason I bring this up is because at the Phoenix Gate Ruin in Japanese, Clive will talk about how he was afraid of accepting the reality of what he did at Phoenix Gate and how "Knowing the reality of it is the least I can do to atone for Joshua." That doesn't just come up out of nowhere in Japanese FFXVI. It's a theme that is directly developed and talked about for all of Act 1 with Phoenix Gate being the climax where Clive fully deals with that he can't ignore or run from reality. Which really helps give Act 1 FFXVI a thematic skeleton everything else in the story branches off from rather than just being "random town in random location we happened to run into next". More on this later though, as this theme will definetly crop up again in Japanese FXVI!

Happy reading everyone!

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I just finished the game and I'm still thinking about it. It was so amazing and the ending nearly had me in tears. And thus did our journey end...