Final Fantasy 16: Can You Control Party Members?

Final Fantasy 16 tells the story of Clive Rosfield. But, he’s not alone. Throughout your journey, you’ll meet a wonderful cast of characters who’ll aid him. Our FF16 party members guide discusses whether you can actually control your companions or not.

Can You Control Party Members in FF16?

When discussing whether or not your can control your Final Fantasy 16 party members, the simplest answer is: yes and no. By this, I mean that one party member has simple command inputs, while the rest are fully automated.

Torgal the Dog Has Command Inputs

Once you’ve unlocked Torgal as a party member, you’ll notice a few commands. For instance, he can Sic and Ravage your opponents, which are offensive moves. There’s also the Heal command, where he replenishes a small amount of Clive’s HP.

If you don’t want the hassle of manually inputting the commands, then you can use the Timely Rings. The Ring of Timely Assistance makes it so that Torgal’s actions are all automated, reacting depending on the battle situation. Meanwhile, the Ring of Timely Strikes also has the same effect, though it’s mostly used if you want to chain combos and abilities via the Square button only.

Personally, I feel that the Ring of Timely Strikes makes combat a bit too simple. I eventually got bored, so I switched to just the Ring of Timely Assistance. At the very least, I didn’t have to worry about Torgal’s attacks anymore.

Other Party Members Are AI-Controlled

While Clive is the main character, there are a few situations where the perspective switches to that of others (which we won’t spoil here). However, in terms of your Final Fantasy 16 party members, they’re AI-controlled, and they’re merely there to support you.

That means characters like Cid Telamon and Jill Warrick will automatically cast spells and attack hostiles. Still, you can’t manually command them. Likewise, there’s no party menu or interface where you can change the party’s composition, as this changes automatically depending on the storyline beats.

In any case, that’s everything you need to know about the manual control of party members in Final Fantasy 16. For more tips and strategies, you can visit our FF16 guides hub.