Ahead of the release of Final Fantasy 16 on 22 June 2023, Square Enix hosted a Japanese-language pre-launch live stream where producer Naoki Yoshida shared even more details about the highly anticipated RPG. Key to these details was that the game would feature a ‘New Game+‘ mode, as well as an unlockable, higher difficulty level called ‘Final Fantasy Mode’.
A longtime common feature in games, and originating with Japanese RPGs, New Game+ allows a player to restart the game’s main campaign once they complete it, and carry over their character’s endgame statistics, items, and abilities intact.
Naturally, this can make the game significantly easier, so New Game+ modes usually come hand in hand with higher difficulty settings, too.
In Final Fantasy 16, this higher difficulty setting will be called ‘Final Fantasy Mode’. It will causes all of the game’s enemies to exist at a higher level, and also raise the maximum player level cap to compensate for that – the new level cap will be 100.
Read: Final Fantasy 16 preview: A complete rejuvenation of the series
Yoshida revealed there will also be a new weapon that will be available to craft exclusively in Final Fantasy Mode, called ‘Ultima Weapon’, which we assume will be the most powerful weapon available to protagonist Clive in the game.
Completing FF16 in Final Fantasy Mode will award a Gold Trophy for the PlayStation 5′ achievement system. Additionally, the new mode will also provide an additional difficulty level to the game’s arcade-like combat trials and challenges, called the ‘Ultimania’ difficulty.
Final Fantasy 16 will be released on 22 June 2023 on PlayStation 5. A free demo of FF16 is available now.
