Book Review - The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide
- May 4
- 6 min read
May 4th 2026
Final Fantasy XVI fans had the chance to revisit Valisthea with two DLCs for the game, Echoes of the Fallen and The Rising Tide, expanding the epic story and adding more characters and locations to its world. Two years later, some of the artwork that helped shape them has arrived in the game’s second artbook, The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide.
Released by Square Enix Books on May 5th 2026, the 96-page book acts as an expansion itself to the release for the base game in The Art of Final Fantasy XVI, aimed at those wanting more Final Fantasy art on their shelf. A copy has joined the collection here, so I can give my thoughts on the new release.
Build Quality
The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide comes as a 22cm x 30.2cm hardcover, but is thinner that most artbooks due to having just 96 pages. I appreciate sticking to a hardcover despite this, which means that it still matches the previous volume. It comes with a dustjacket too, with an illustration underneath of Clive and Joshua on a black cover, a nice touch for those that like to take them off when reading.
The paper and print quality are both excellent as you would expect, and being a smaller book, the binding has no issues either. This is all good news, so buyers won’t have to worry about quality or its long-term preservation.
Content
Things are less positive inside for me personally, as although the art on show is fantastic, what was chosen to be included left me wanting. It is broken down into four main chapters; Key Art, Echoes of the Fallen, The Rising Tide, and Other to round off the book, each with a mix of content to cover what was added to the game.
The artwork itself is superb, which will come as no surprise to fans of the series. Kazuya Takahashi gets the spotlight in a lot of the book, particularly in the ‘Key Art’ chapter that features his stunning character pieces. Each of these uses rough brush strokes to convey detail and blend colours together in a unique way for his standout style. Other art throughout is also great, from frame-worthy environments, to costume concepts that convey their design in simpler art styles. If you’re looking for more Final Fantasy XVI artwork after enjoying what came before, you won’t be disappointed.
For me though, what they choose to include and the size of the book, is more of an issue. Although the ‘Key Art’ chapter starts the book on a high, when you get into the art for the playable world of the DLC itself, it feels lacking because you can’t help but feel that they are holding back on sharing more. The environment art is the strongest for the game itself, providing a look at incredibly detailed locations and assets, such as the below for The Surge in Mysidia, making these spreads a highlight of the book for me.
Character art, like the book that came before, is again disappointing. This is because while shown in different styles, it’s all of the final designs that you see in the game and presented loose on a blank background. While some look incredible, such as the Leviathan, there is very little shown, with characters like Famiel and Shula, as well as the enemies, getting only a single spread or image. It’s a shame, because there is no reason not to share more, especially given that they could have made the book bigger than 96 pages to accommodate a more interesting look at what they created.
The ‘Other’ chapter has similar issues, giving a look at a new costume for Clive, Joshua, and Jill, again all final designs that take up a lot of space that could have been used to show more. The spread of swords and icons feels like filler, as these are what you see in the game anyway, leaving me thinking about other books that clearly struggle to fit everything into hundreds of pages, while this one does little with 96. A page of character signatures is different, which I appreciate, but I’d have rather seen more character and enemy art.
The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide does end on a high though with a look at 15 pages of load screen as seen below, each with illustrations of locations from Valisthea. This is a large portion of the book, but with three to a page and how good they look, I’d have liked to see them printed larger across more pages, but even as it is, I like the inclusion a lot.
If you’re hoping to read insights into the game, you won’t find that here, there isn’t even a foreword, introduction, or afterword, which is unusual for an artbook. This does mean that outside of the key art, this book adds very little to what you have already seen on screen when playing the game’s DLC.
Ultimately, fans of the artwork for the game will find more to enjoy, but you will likely be left asking why they didn’t share more. Sometimes being left wanting is nice when you’ve had a lot of a good thing, except that here it’s because you’re left hungry.
Credits
Sadly, the art is not credited on the page, instead the artists are listed in the back of the book. Kazuya Takahashi’s key art does include his signature though, but elsewhere you won’t find this. There was certainly space to include artists credits, so it’s a bit of a let-down, however they have not been left out entirely.
Use of Space
It’s a very mixed bag with the page design, the key art gets the space it needs for a great showcase, but some of the environment art pages that would benefit from larger images to show their full details, are left with less breathing room. Ignoring the fact that the book could up its page count to include more artwork, more pages would also benefit some of what is already in the book. At the very least a reorganization would have helped to give everything more space.
There are other spreads with a single key art or an environment piece that look wonderful though, showing off the smaller details with the colours popping of the page. There is minimal image loss in the centre fold as well that helps make these images shine as they should.
Value
The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide comes with an RRP of $24.99/ £23.99, which is lower for an artbook due to the size. At full price, it’s a little hard to recommend unless you’re a die-hard Final Fantasy fan. This is especially the case now, as you can find The Art of Final Fantasy XVI for a similar price which has over 300 pages, the good news though, is that discounts are already available.
Using Amazon as I always do for consistency, you can pick up the book on the week of its release for $23.29 / £19.19, which will of course fluctuate. The US price is still maybe a little high in my opinion, but in the UK it is slightly easier to recommend. It’s at a price point that I wouldn’t tell you to rush out and grab a copy for, but you likely wouldn’t regret the decision either. A discount is definitely recommended given the size and it not giving you a real peak behind the scenes.
Verdict
The Art of Final Fantasy XVI: Echoes of the Rising Tide delivers artwork that is a joy to see printed at this quality in a book. However, the team didn’t make effective use of the space inside, nor does the book give you a look at the alternate and unused concepts that you find in most video game artbooks. Given the beauty and scope of the game and its DLC, I closed this volume knowing there is almost certainly a huge amount of interesting concepts and illustrations of early ideas that will be left unseen, despite having the perfect opportunity to share some in an artbook.
Fans will still find art to enjoy here, but those that have other artbooks in their collection may be confused as to why they didn’t make the most of this release.
If you’re a fan of Final Fantasy XVI, Echoes of the Fallen, and The Rising Tide, and would still like a copy of the book, or want to add it to your wishlist, you can do so below;
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