Technologies

Final Fantasy XVI Drags the RPG Series Into Incredible Action Territory

Preview: Square Enix reveals the story and combat of the next entry in its iconic series before it hits PS5 this summer.

Every main numbered Final Fantasy game tells a new story in a fresh universe, giving each upcoming entry a powerful mystique. That sense is particularly strong with Final Fantasy XVI, which has been teased with spectacular, overwhelming trailers since 2020.

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The PS5 exclusive lands on June 22, and developer Square Enix lifted the curtain at a New York City preview event with a playable demo build of the game earlier this month. Acting as producer is Naoki Yoshida (AKA Yoshi-P), the charismatic figure credited with reviving massively multiplayer online RPG Final Fantasy XIV. He and his team gave us a primer on the story and world before letting us try out the game for the first time.

World at war

This RPG takes place in Valisthea, a world divided into six nations that depend on giant magic crystals — one of Final Fantasy’s recurring elements — for energy. As the game kicks off, this energy is badly depleted and conflict is brewing between Valisthea’s nations.

It’s more of a cold war due to the existence of Dominants — humans with the power to summon massive magical creatures known as Eikons. Like the dragons in Games of Thrones, the Eikons are basically this world’s weapons of mass destruction. Except all the nations have them, and they act as a deterrent to open war.

You play as Clive Rosfield, whose younger brother Joshua has control of the powerful Phoenix summon. After tragedy strikes (its exact nature was unclear in the preview), Clive is bound to another fiery Eikon, Ifrit, and goes on a quest for vengeance. This causes Eikons to battle each other for the first time, throwing off Valisthea’s delicate political balance and creating lots of collateral damage.

Phoenix spreads its wings in Final Fantasy XVI — The Phoenix Eikon is central to the game’s epic tale.

Square Enix

Clive’s journey will take him through Valisthea’s seven nations — which are divided into segmented open areas rather than one big open world — with a shifting party of AI-controlled allies as backup (there wasn’t much exploration in the preview section though). You’ll also be able to dive into the history of Valisthea as much as you wish, Localization Director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox told CNET.

«We have a character that gathers lore; he will tell you about what’s going on in the game — characters, places, history, things like that,» said Koji Fox, whose previous Final Fantasy projects include IX and XIV. «It doesn’t affect the story, it doesn’t affect gameplay, but for those players that want to go deep and find out what happened 200 years ago, why these countries hate each other, you can go and do that.»

Dominating the Dominants

The playable section of our demo saw Clive and his ally Cidolfus Telamon (this game’s Cid, a recurring name in the series) making their way up a dark tower on the hunt for Benedikta Harman, a spy for a rival nation. Cid is the Dominant of lightning-summoning Ramuh, while Benedikta is linked to terrifying wind elemental Garuda.

Cid has beautifully styled hair and his voice will likely sound familiar — he’s voiced by Ralph Ineson, who appeared in Game of Thrones, Chernobyl and Willow and infuses his character with awesome gravitas. The fiery Benedikta is easily the most striking character design in the preview, and you know she’s a baddy because drops the f-bomb.

Benedikta looks at someone off camera in Final Fantasy XVI — Benedikta is a pretty intense rival for Clive.

Square Enix

These Dominants humanize the political conflict, and their differing statuses within their own kingdoms hint at the varying cultures and attitudes across this world. This section occurs a few hours into the game, though there’s also a tutorial where you play as a young, fresh-faced Clive to learn the basics of combat.

The dingy tower wasn’t exactly a visual showcase for the first PS5 Final Fantasy, which will let you choose between performance and fidelity modes in the finished game. However, this location did offer plenty of opportunities to explore the game’s real-time combat system as goons leapt out at every turn. Unlike Final Fantasy VII Remake, you don’t control your entire party directly — only Clive and his faithful canine companion Torgal (whom you can pet).

Tailoring your battles

Basic combat fits neatly in the action-RPG mold, with Clive able to employ a mixture of melee attacks, magic, dodging and blocking. Final Fantasy XVI’s battles move much more quickly than those old games though, and combat director Ryota Suzuki drew on his experience developing lightning-fast action game Devil May Cry 5 for this series evolution.

«The most important thing for Final Fantasy XVI was to make a system that is accessible to lots of different types of playing styles; more technical, stylish and for players that are not too into action,» Suzuki said via translator. «So we didn’t want it to be overwhelming.»

Clive scratches Torgal on the chin in Final Fantasy XVI — Torgal is an exceptionally good dog and useful in a fight.

Square Enix

Adding to Final Fantasy XVI’s accessibility are the «Timely» accessories, which you can equip to simplify certain aspects of combat. These can let you pull off Clive’s most impressive combos by tapping the same button (instead of learning specific inputs), allow for easier dodging and make doggo pal Torgal battle automatically.

You can tailor this element based on which ones you equip, giving you a chance to get comfortable with different parts of the combat system at your own pace. The attack one had the most obvious impact, since unequipping it reduced Clive’s attacks from visually stunning Devil May Cry-style aerial ballets to basic thrusts and chops — you’ll have to learn a bunch of combos to achieve his most stylish moves normally.

Elemental Eikons

Your magical combat abilities are defined by the Eikon you have equipped, with Phoenix’s fire, Titan’s earth and Garuda’s wind were available in the demo, but it seems like Clive absorbs or copies these from other Dominants as he encounters them (it’s likely Garuda’s powers were unlocked early for the demo version). Earning experience lets you unlock or improve Clive’s elemental skills.

Clive channels Eikon power in battle in Final Fantasy XVI — You can channel Eikons to employ elemental attacks in battle.

Square Enix

You can also switch between Eikons in battle, essentially allowing Clive to change character classes on the fly. It’s an evolution of the beloved job system that debuted in 1992’s Final Fantasy V, in which you assigned roles to characters and they learn those job-specific abilities through leveling up.

«It was my wish to take that job system and somehow replace jobs with Eikons, and recreate that system in a full action setting,» game director Hiroshi Takai, who worked on the fifth entry in the series, said through a translator.

«Making it something that’s very customizable and individual to each player … the Clive they have at the end and the palette they use in that final battle is different for every single person.»

Garuda flashes a sinister smile in Final Fantasy XVI — Garuda is awesome looking throughout the intense boss battle.

Square Enix

Flipping between these elemental powers became increasingly natural as the demo progressed, with the mixture of these and the satisfying dodge system making the boss battle against Benedikta and her Eikon a joy to play. The smooth transitions between gameplay and cutscenes peppered the experience with that classic Final Fantasy melodrama without pulling control away for too long.

Battle of the titans

The final section of the demo took place a few hours further into the game, with Ifrit going up against Benedikta’s Garuda in an epic Godzilla vs Kong-style confrontation. It’s the kind of sequence that would have been a cutscene in older Final Fantasy games, but XVI makes it completely playable and extremely fun.

This battle felt completely different to normal combat, conveying an awesome sense of primordial power as the Eikons lay waste to an isolated part of Valisthea. Ifrit employs a mixture of beefy melee moves and fiery blasts against Garuda’s quick slashes and wind-based attacks. Projectiles also neutralize each other, which is a particularly cool touch.

Eikons clash in Final Fantasy XVI — The Eikons are a force of nature, and their clashes make a huge mess.

Square Enix

The developers noted that the gameplay of these Eikon clashes will vary, hinting that you’ll have to battle each one differently depending on their elemental prowess, unique attributes and Clive’s relationship with the character who’s controlling them.

Even with the shift toward action-oriented battles, Final Fantasy XVI looks set to be an emotional roller coaster in the series’ grand tradition. Speaking through a translator, producer Naoki Yoshida wants players to feel thrilled and hopeful by the time they’re done with the game.

«When those end credits roll and the players experience the whole story, I want them to feel that they can move toward tomorrow, no matter what happened today,» he said.

Technologies

Lemon8 and TikTok Could Be Banned. Here’s How the Apps Are Different

TikTok and Lemon8 are owned by the same parent company, but they offer different experiences.

TikTok faces another sale deadline Saturday, and unless a US buyer intervenes — or President Donald Trump extends the deadline again — the app could disappear for US users. If the ban goes into effect, TikTok wouldn’t be the only app to disappear: TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, could be caught in the crossfire.

Read more: A VPN Alone Probably Won’t Bypass TikTok Bans. Here’s Why

Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, the same parent company that owns TikTok. It’s one of the top Lifestyle apps in Apple’s App Store, and it has more than 10 million downloads in the Google Play store.

«Lemon8 is a lifestyle community focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,» the app’s description reads in both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video- and photo-sharing platform that eschews the vertical-scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok do have in common is that both have Following and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you will like.

Lemon8’s content is split into six topic tabs, plus a seventh tab called All. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel and Home. These tabs can be found across the top of your screen, and tapping into these tabs shows you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable photo collections like in Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label clothing or a product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 is different from other apps in terms of what is posted and how it’s presented.

Lemon8 has a lot of influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s difficult to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and this appears to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but usually these are marked as such in the bottom-left corner.

There aren’t a lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps, either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with «memes,» like «funnymemes» and «catmemes,» have fewer than 1 million views (as opposed to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is Lemon8 isn’t meant for memes. It’s meant to be more of a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There’s also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include instructions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have useful information, but those captions are more about connecting posts to hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you quickly format and to give you an idea of what to caption your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between the magazines Martha Stewart Living, Muscle & Fitness and Travel + Leisure. You can find some useful tips in Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 is seemingly positive so far. One TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 «Pinterest, but interactive.» Another said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with similar language, making some believe ByteDance paid these creators.

And some Lemon8 creators’ claims make this theory sound more viable. One Lemon8 creator told Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed Insider emails that outlined the app’s payment structure.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram rival as more users stop using, or abandon, Meta’s app.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a leaked internal memo from Meta showed that Instagram engagement was declining. ByteDance executives could be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth might show ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

Will Lemon8 be banned alongside TikTok?

Since Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, which also owns TikTok, it’s possible that the app will be banned alongside TikTok on April 5.

The law requiring the sale of TikTok could be applied generally to other apps that are owned and operated by ByteDance and its subsidiaries. When TikTok shutdown operations in the US in January, Lemon8 was shutdown alongside the app. If TikTok shuts down again, Lemon8 likely will as well.

Should you download Lemon8?

Even with a shutdown looming, Lemon8 is free, so you can download and try the app now before the sale deadline. Just know the app’s posts resemble instructional guides more than memes to share, and many posts feel like advertisements.

What’s Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It states Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Some collected information includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy might raise eyebrows.

«The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country where you live,» the policy reads. The company has servers around the world, according to the policy, so your information could be stored in any of them.

This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some user’s data. The company stores US-based user data in Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with «robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval» overseen by a US-based security team.

For more on the TikTok ban, here’s what to know about the Supreme Court’s decision, here’s what could happen next and here are other apps users are flocking to.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 4, #193

Three of the four categories are especially tough today. Here are hints and the answers, for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, No. 193, for April 4.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

I only solved one of the four categories for today’s Connections: Sports Edition on my own, so if you need help, you’re not alone.

The yellow category was pretty simple, but after that I couldn’t make any connections. It might help if you know a lot about a certain NBA player’s resume. Read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is out of beta now, making its debut on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 9. That’s a sign that the game has earned enough loyal players that The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by the Times, will continue to publish it. It doesn’t show up in the NYT Games app but now appears in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can continue to play it free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Do better.

Green group hint: March Madness.

Blue group hint: Six-time all-star.

Purple group hint: Think Wimbledon.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Not meeting expectations.

Green group: Teams in the Women’s Final Four.

Blue group: Teams Kawhi Leonard has played for.

Purple group: Ends in a piece of tennis equipment.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is not meeting expectations. The four answers are bust, disappointment, dud and failure.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams in the Women’s Final Four. The four answers are Bruins, Gamecocks, Huskies and Longhorns.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is teams Kawhi Leonard has played for. The four answers are Aztecs, Clippers, Raptors and Spurs.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is ends in a piece of tennis equipment. The four answers are bracket, eyeball, horseshoes and internet.

Quick tips for Connections: Sports Edition

#1: Don’t grab for the easiest group. For each word, think about other sports categories it might fit in – is this a word that can be used in football, or to describe scoring options?

#2: Second meanings are important. The puzzle loves to use last names and even college names that mean other things, to fool you into thinking they are words, not names.

#3: And the opposite is also true. Words like HURTS might seem like a regular word, but it’s also the last name of at least one pro athlete.

Technologies

Skip Your iPhone’s Lockscreen: Here’s the Hidden Flashlight Trick You Need to Know

A couple of taps can really make a difference on your iPhone.

Not long ago, your iPhone’s lockscreen would only allow two app shortcuts that you couldn’t change: camera controls and a flashlight toggle. However, iOS 18.2 allows you to customize these shortcuts to almost anything you might want. This small but impactful change is one of many ways iOS 18 supercharges customization for iPhone and iPad users. But what if you still want an easy-to-access way to toggle your flashlight without unlocking your phone?

Apple introduced an accessibility feature in iOS 14 that, once enabled, allows you to perform actions by just tapping on the back of your phone. The feature is called Tap Back and it remains a sleeper feature that’s sneakily hidden away in your settings menu. Enabling Tap Back essentially allows you to create a button on the back of your iPhone to perform an action without needing to take up any space.

Once you have Tap Back enabled, it doesn’t take long to see how much of a game-changer it can be with its added convenience. Below, we’ll show you how to set it up so a couple of taps on the back of your iPhone will let you launch just about anything you want.

For more, check out what’s in the latest iOS 18.4 release.

How to set up Back Tap on iPhone

Whether you want to link Back Tap with your flashlight, camera or launch a different iPhone app, the path through your iPhone settings begins the same way.

On your compatible iPhone (iPhone 8 or later), launch the Settings application and go to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap. Now you have the option to launch your action (in this case, your flashlight) with either two or three taps. Although two taps is obviously faster, I would suggest three taps because if you fidget with your phone, it’s easy to accidentally trigger the accessibility feature.

Once you choose a tap option, select the Flashlight option — or a different action if you prefer. You’ll see over 30 options to choose from, including system options like Siri or taking a screenshot, to accessibility-specific functions like opening a magnifier or turning on real-time live captions. You can also set up Back Tap to open the Control Center, go back home, mute your audio, turn the volume up and down and run any shortcuts you’ve downloaded or created.

You’ll know you’ve successfully selected your choice when a blue checkmark appears to the right of the action. You could actually set up two shortcuts this way — one that’s triggered by two taps and one that’s triggered by three taps to the iPhone’s back cover.

Once you exit the Settings application, you can try out the newly enabled Back Tap feature by tapping the back of your iPhone — in my case, to turn on the flashlight. To turn off the flashlight, you can tap on the back of your iPhone as well, but you can also just turn it off from your lock screen if that’s easier.

For more great iPhone tips, here’s how to keep your iPhone screen from dimming all the time and canceling all those subscriptions you don’t want or need.