Devil May Cry Designer Wants Newbies to Experience Final Fantasy 16, His “Personal Masterpiece”

Final Fantasy 16 is only a few short days away from its June 22 launch. Unlike classic games in the Final Fantasy series, this one is continuing the more modern trend of embracing the action RPG genre. In fact, the developers at Square Enix Creative Business Unit III have brought in Ryota Suzuki as one of the lead designers. Fans of the Japanese scene will recognize that name as one of the designers behind games like Devil May Cry 5 and Dragon’s Dogma, giving Final Fantasy 16 quite the pedigree for its action gameplay. What’s even better is that Suzuki recently called Final Fantasy 16 his “personal masterpiece.”

The news was first spotted by the team at VGC and concerns a video that Suzuki as part of a series of live letters to fans from the team at Square Enix. In it, Suzuki talked about how he’s been “making action games for the past 25 years,” and over that time he’s working on some absolute bangers. Devil May Cry 5 is the big feather in his cap for many, but he also played a major part in Monster Hunter: World and Dragon’s Dogma, in addition to putting in some time with various Capcom fighting games. When he calls Final Fantasy 16 “his personal masterpiece” it means quite a bit.

Suzuki Ryota's message from the Final Fantasy XVI Japanese live letter was enlightening- he says that throughout his entire career designing action games for the past 25 years, he truly thinks FF16 is his own personal masterpiece.

I added English subs to his heartfelt message! pic.twitter.com/LlXKzAAn2C

— ☆オードリーAudrey☆ (@aitaikimochi) June 18, 2023

However, that wasn’t the only thing Suzuki talked about. He spent a significant chunk of the video talking about how his team worked hard to make a system that would appear to players who either haven’t played games in the genre before or “are not well versed in action games.” If the team is able to nail the gameplay, that’s going to be huge for a series that has kind of struggled to find a real identity over the last few entries. That’s not to say that modern Final Fantasy has all been bad, but Square Enix has tried to change things up a few times and it’s never completely landed.

Fortunately, Square has already released a demo for Final Fantasy 16 that you can pick up right now. Progress in the demo carries over to the main game, so there’s no real reason to not give it a try. The demo takes new and veteran players through the first few hours, making it the perfect way to see if Suzuki and his teams’ new gameplay fits your taste before Final Fantasy 16 releases on June 22.