Final Fantasy 16 graphics modes: Should you play in quality or performance mode?

In Final Fantasy 16, players can choose whether to play in performance or quality modes, and each option has advantages and disadvantages. Regardless of the mode you decide to play, you’ll still get to experience Clive’s vengeance and epic adventures. This is everything you should know about both graphics modes and which option is best for you.

Final Fantasy 16: Performance versus quality graphics modes, explained

In Final Fantasy 16, you can play in performance or quality graphics modes. In Performance mode, FF16 will run between 1080 to 1440p with a frame rate per second of around 60, at the best of times at least. In Quality mode, it will run between 1440p to 4K. Although the latter option may sound like you’ll get the best resolution while playing, it’s important to note in Quality mode you’re restricted to 30 FPS.

Unfortunately, there’s no clear winner when choosing between Performance and Quality, so you can choose whichever you prefer.

For what it’s worth, while playing the FF16 demo, I switched between both graphics modes and found the Performance mode seemed the most stable, at least for me. The motion blur wasn’t as bad in this mode, so I didn’t feel so nauseous with all the motion.

There are other ways to reduce motion blur to prevent this, but there’s no official way to switch off motion blur, which is quite frustrating.

Will there be an FF16 frame rate update?

Although the developers stated FFF16 didn’t need a patch or update upon release, it has since been noted there are frame rate drops in places with lots of characters, such as towns.

As such, there will be a patch to fix this. However, there has yet to be an official patch release date announcement. For now, the best graphics mode to play Final Fantasy 16 is Performance Mode for the mostly-stable frames and reduced motion blur.