Final Fantasy XVI Collector’s Edition Images And Review
TLDR: I Love It
Final Fantasy XVI Collector’s Edition Images And Review
This isn’t a typical review as you may see on other gaming websites. As mentioned in the bio of Pixel Parables, the publication won’t be doing game reviews but I thought commentary on collector’s editions or merchandise I have purchased could be useful. This will be similar in style to the one I did for Tears of the Kingdom. I will do this review by just breaking down what was included in the edition, some images of how it was presented, and some overall thoughts at the end.
I bought this from the Square Enix UK store and it’s been a well, shall we say an exciting story. It’s exclusive to their store and I pre-ordered it the first day it went live. A few months later the store got moved to a new store but my order was in the old store. The move results in Reddit being full of people who didn’t get orders or got them late. Even IGN reported on it. I was also affected as my order was lost despite being dispatched. I got a refund as they weren’t able to replace it but about a week or so later they had stock on the new store so I tried again and it came a couple of working days later.
To begin with, let’s look at the pre-order bonuses that for all orders placed in the store regardless of which edition. Two items come with each other, the first of which is Wall Banners. This is the worst thing that came with my order and I am glad they are freebies because Square Enix merch is usually quite high quality but these are incredibly cheap. One of them came creased and I managed to crease the other one. The box for them is quite tight which is why they crease and perhaps it could have been packaged better.
The other bonus is a steel book. It’s coloured black and has Clive on one side and a sword with a logo on the other side. It looks great, with a very nice weight and quality to it but a slightly odd freebie for this edition which I will explain in a moment.
Next up is the edition itself. The outer box is lovely. It has a piece of artwork in Yoshitaka Amano’s signature style and it shows all the Dominates in the game. It's quite detailed and tasteful. All the dominants look very regal in their own way and I love how they each flow and overlap slightly on each other.
When you open the box you are greeted with another smaller box with the image of the key art on it. It’s quite a nice way of welcoming you to the rest of the contents of the edition.
Inside it are three items, the first of which is another Steelbook. I have one disc with this edition but 2 different steelbooks to share them in as well as the standard edition case. ‘feels a bit extreme. Maybe I timeshare the disc between the cases every 4 months or so. The artwork is great on it. On the front side, is Clive resting on his sword which is mostly monochrome but has bits of red to represent the Ifrit. It’s also embossed on it so it has quite a nice feel to it. On the reverse is the logo of the game. Again it’s another great quality steelbook.
Next in this box is a cloth map of Valisthea which is quite nice. I wish the quality of the material was a little better but it’s not bad, not cheap feeling like the wall banners for example. It would look quite nice framed I believe.
The final thing in this box is some silver metal Eikon pins. As I said in my Zelda review I don’t typically like pins but these are stunning. They have a really nice weight to them and even the packaging for them has a nice thick piece of polystyrene to keep it protected. I love how they all have colour on them to represent the Eikons e.g. Shiva has blue on hers. They are too nice to stick on something for me so I would have to put them on display. The detail is lovely and they are quite a nice and chunky size.
And finally the main event. I love this statue, it’s absolutely stunning and incredibly detailed. It’s in effect the Phoenix and Ifrit fighting with each other but the Phoenix is sort of resting on Ifrit’s arm presumably trying to bite it or something. It looks tense between the two of them and I love how the Phoenix’s different colour feathers come through nicely here. My only tiny complaint is, considering Ifrit is standing on a rock I would have liked the figure to have more weight to it but aside from that I think it’s fantastic.
My concluding thoughts are that Square Enix has done another fantastic collector’s edition. They do merch so well even though it’s always on the pricier side than it probably should be and I would say the same for this one edition too. That being said I highly recommend it if you can get your hands on it. Let me know what you think in the comments below and if you have a moment, please consider following us on here and Twitter/Mastodon.