Final Fantasy 16’s platinum trophy is sounding like an 80+ hour grind

Final Fantasy XVI's platinum trophy will seemingly take 80 hours to clear — and potentially longer if players have to beat 'Final Fantasy Mode.'

The reveal of the upcoming Final Fantasy XVI trophies is still a few months off, but thanks to a recently translated interview, we now know to expect the same kind of platinum trophy grind we last saw in our Crisis Core Final Fantasy VII Rebirth review. With 35+ hours of side content and potentially a secondary hard mode run to beat, Final Fantasy XVI's platinum trophy could take around 100 hours at least to unlock.

Prepare to grind for the FFXVI platinum trophy.

Final Fantasy XVI's PS5 platinum trophy is sure to be an RPG grind

According to a translation of a Famitsu interview with the game's developers, Final Fantasy XVI will have "70-80 hours of gameplay" for players looking to "master and level up all abilities, gather all accessories, do all the side quests, and fight all the monster hunts." This would suggest that FFXVI's platinum trophy will take 70 hours to beat, though it depends on whether the platinum trophy requires players to beat the game's hard mode difficulty.

Final Fantasy XVI's difficulty modes will include a "Story Mode" to help entice fans who aren't big on action games, as well as"Final Fantasy Mode," which players can unlock as a more challenging New Game+ mode. FFXVI's second playthrough will also feature an online leaderboard for "endless gameplay" — though for the sake of our sanity, we'll leave this out of the presumed platinum trophy requirements.

Final Fantasy 16 might be an action game, but it's more JRPG in length.

So we're looking at a game that will probably take more than 70 hours to platinum — but how much more? Well, to figure that out, presuming players skip cutscenes on the second playthrough, we'd just need to figure out how long the main story takes to beat. According to FFXVI producer Naoki Yoshida: "If you did not skip any cutscenes, it’ll take about 35 hours for you to understand the meat of the story and complete the game."

We do know that the Final Fantasy XVI's cutscenes were reportedly 11 hours long, although we now know that this was 11 hours long at least. As Yoshida clarifies: "The 11 hours only pertained to the game's main story, and there are even more if you count both combat encounters and side mission cutscenes. The 11-hour estimate does not even include scenes that happen during battle events, so it truly is a chunky amount. And that doesn’t include side quests either."

If we're generous and suggest there's maybe another hour of battle event cutscenes in the main story, and presume players would skip cutscenes on a second Final Fantasy Mode playthrough, then it might take 94 hours to unlock Final Fantasy XVI's platinum trophy. That said, there's a slim chance we might not actually have to beat the game's Final Fantasy Mode for the platinum, or even all the game's side missions — though it's a very slim chance.

Let us know in the comments if you're already setting aside the time and gearing up to hunt down the Final Fantasy XVI platinum trophy, and let us know if you're worried the game's Active Time Lore feature will drag this playthrough time into the high hundreds of hours.

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Written by Lee Brady

News Editor Lee covers the latest upcoming PS5 games like Ghost of Yotei while making sure PlayStation Plus’ classic PS1 and PS2 games are given enough respect. Lee leads the charge on our original data analysis courtesy of Game Lens. His 25 years of PlayStation experience compliments his love of Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Sonic the Hedgehog.