Summary
Now thatFinal Fantasy 16has been around for a few months on the PlayStation 5, fans have turned their attention to the upcomingFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth. While the two games share a franchise, recent previews ofFF7 Rebirthhave shown that the two games are vastly different.FF16was a mostly linear character action game centered around the story of its protagonist, Clive. This stands in stark contrast toFinal Fantasy 7 Rebirth, which will be a semi-open-world action RPG centered around an ensemble cast that makes up the player’s party. One of the other differences is how each game handles the franchise’s summonable entities.
Final Fantasyfirst added summons in its third entry, and they have remained an important part of the franchise since. While the lore and purpose of each entity typically changes from game to game, the entities themselves remain the same. These typically include Ramuh, Shiva, Ifrit, Phoenix, Odin, Titan, Bahamut and Leviathan. Some games have more, and some games have less, but these summons exist across multiple entries and connectFinal Fantasygames to one another aesthetically. WhileFinal Fantasy 7has many of these entities, they aren’t the focus.Final Fantasy 16,on the other hand, depicts a world that is deeply impacted by these deities, referred to in the game as Eikons.
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Eikons Are The Focus of FF16
Final Fantasy 16tells the story of a world whose fate is dictated by its access to magic and its most powerful magic users, the dominants. Clive is the dominant of Ifrit and has the unique ability to absorb elemental powers from the dominants of otherEikons. These dominants can channel their Eikonic powers and even become them. Part ofFinal Fantasy 16’s unique identity is that it lets players directly control Ifrit and fight other Eikons. These battles are huge events, the likes of which the franchise had never seen before; they’re fast, violent, and gloriously over-the-top.
FF16’s Eikon battles are key to the game’s identity in a way that is unique from other entries. The Eikons and their dominants are crucial to the world’s politics and the various wars that make up the story’s backdrop. The action mechanics of the game allow for these fights to be quick and dirty, lacking the deliberate strategy of otherFinal Fantasygames.FF16’s Eikon battles work because the combat for the entire game is built around speed and a feeling of direct control. The relentless focus on Clive as the main protagonist also means that these big set-piece battles don’t feel lacking when the rest of the cast is left out of them.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth’s Use of Summons Will Be A Step Back
Final Fantasy 7does not shareFinal Fantasy 16’s focus on summons. The entities are in the game, but they are not as central to the main story or the world’s lore. While players can do summon attacks with their party, they will be animated sequences and not scripted set-piece fights. While this one element of the game is a step back fromFF16, it’s actually for the best. The big Eikon battles ofFF16wouldn’t fit intoFinal Fantasy 7’s storyand would take away from the party-driven combat.Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthis also an RPG, so on top of controlling a whole party in combat, the fighting is more methodical and strategic, something that the big set-piece battles ofFF16would go against.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthwill be a step back fromFF16’s usage of the series' summonable entities, but that step back will be in the service of telling a different type of story with a different type of gameplay.Final Fantasygames are often very different from one another, so it’s unsurprising to see each game use summons in varying ways and have a different focus for both gameplay and storytelling. For those who aren’t a fan of this difference,Final Fantasy 16DLChas been confirmed to be in development.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirthwill launch on July 25, 2025 on PS5.
