Final Fantasy 16: Story Vs Action Mode [Explained]

Final Fantasy 16 has been released and has already taken the series’ fans by storm with the new RPG and action game elements which is a first for the series. The developers took a big turn for the series by changing their classic turn-based style into a complete hack-and-slash-oriented action game. With that change, they also put other changes into the game compared to their previous games for a fresh start while retaining some original aspects and appeal of the Final Fantasy series. One of the new changes in the game is the Final Fantasy 16 Story vs Action mode. 

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Key Takeaways

• Final Fantasy 16 has only two difficulty sliders when you play the game for the first time and can unlock additional challenges upon finishing it once.
• Final Fantasy 16 is not only welcoming to a new generation of people trying out the series for the first time with its appealing action-focused combat system, but developers ensure that it is enjoyable for people not accustomed to the genre, like players who don’t have any experience of hack and slash action games. 
• One of the lead directors of combat is a former Capcom combat director with some notable achievements, and he declares Final Fantasy 16 his masterpiece. 

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When you start the game, it will present you with two choices between story–oriented and action–oriented gameplay. These are difficulty sliders and hardly make a difference in the core gameplay. In the name, you can guess which is easy and which is the standard difficulty in the game. 

Story-Focused Mode

The story mode in Final Fantasy 16 Story Vs. Action mode is the Easy mode in the game. Like any accessible mode in any game, the story-focused mode makes the enemies easier to defeat by making them weaker. But in Final Fantasy 16, you also get another easy mode perk: the Timely accessories. 

The Timely accessories are not exclusive to Story mode but are also available in Action mode. Still, the main difference is that they are automatically equipped here but not in Action mode. Timely Accessories:

• Ring of Timely strikes: allows players to perform complex combos by mashing a single button continuously.
• Ring of Timely Evasion: allows players to dodge when an attack is targeted towards them automatically. But it has a downside, and you cannot trigger any counterattacks if you have it equipped.
• Ring of Timely Assistance: it commands Torgal automatically.
• Ring of Timely Focus: it slows down time for the player to have some breathing time when they are about to get hit, allowing them to dodge or counterattack.

The complete reason for Story-focused mode is to allow players to focus more on the Story rather than being bombarded on how to defeat the next boss in the game. 

Action-Focused Mode

The Action Focused mode is another name for normal difficulty in Final Fantasy 16; it’s for players accustomed to action hack-and-slash games rather than players who have just hopped onto the roster. In this, the enemies are a bit harder to deal with than in the Story mode, and you do not have the Timely accessories automatically equipped, but they are still in your inventory. 

The game presents a real challenge when you face foes in this difficulty, but it isn’t that much since it’s still a standard difficulty. But the margin between action and story difficulty is still quite significant. If you are having some annoying time with difficult enemies, you can switch it up by equipping any timely accessories at any time. 

Final Fantasy 16’s combat director is the famous Ryota Suzuki, who previously worked on Devil May Cry 5 and Dragons Dogma while working for Capcom. And he has confirmed that this is his perfect masterpiece as of yet. So you can expect many challenges in Final Fantasy 16’s combat.

How To Change Difficulty

Final Fantasy 16 Story vs. Action mode can be switched and toggled between the two at any time except during combat. You can easily switch or toggle between the two as you see fit. While story mode will make enemies easier to defeat, action mode will make them harder to deal with, but it doesn’t end there.

Once you beat the game, a New game+ mode will be available, and a new Final Fantasy difficulty, which is the hard difficulty mode in the game. 

You can change the difficulty by accessing the system tab from the pause screen and going to the second tab inside the system tab, which is the game settings tab. There, locate the gameplay option that will allow you to toggle the difficulty.

For further queries and tips, do comment down and check out our other guides on Final Fantasy:

• Final Fantasy 16 Trophy Guide.
• Final Fantasy 16 Top 10 Best Weapons.