Edit: updated some of the category scores to better reflect my actual views on it. I didn't want to seem overly harsh, but I also should be as honest with myself as possible.

There's a lot to like about it and a lot to dislike, which is why I feel so conflicted on my overall thoughts of it. After having just beat the campaign, I wanted to sit down and comprehensively analyze the strengths + weaknesses of the game so I could really understand where I stand on this title. As such, this is a really extensive review. Too long actually, I'll say it's too long. But I wouldn't have written this much if I didn't want to give 16 a fair shake, so if you're not interested (I know I wouldn't be) in making it past the gigawall of text just either read the bolded headlines or skip to the concluding thoughts/recommendation at the bottom for final score. Ultimately I'd like to discuss the game with people who've also beaten the game, but I've gone and marked off spoilers for those who haven't yet.

This is only a comprehensive perspective from the base playthrough and NOT New Game +.

Presentation

• Visuals (8/10): Great job in the graphics department. Character/enemy/Eikon/misc. models are thoroughly fleshed out, environments are beautifully lit and stylistically crafted, animations fit well and are well suited for both gameplay/exploration, and particle effects are superb. There are moments where I have to remind myself I’m looking at real time graphics and not just a CGI pre-render, which blows my mind considering where FF was graphically just a few years ago. I will say though, the human designs do feel a little uninspiring in both the character and outfit departments compared to past FF games, not many characters stand out visually and hair physics are a downgrade compared to FF15. Another minor gripe is that around a certain point, the weather permanently changes due to Ultima’s spell, causing the skies to darken and cast a purplish hue over all playable areas. This lasted for a sizable amount of the campaign and ended up making me feel fatigued with the monotone tint. Besides that, it’s still a great looking title for current gen.
• Music (8/10): The overall soundtrack is well done but not exceptionally memorable. There’s a huge range of songs that play depending on mood/situation, most of them aren’t “gotta YouTube this later” hits though. Lot of the tracks do the job just fine for their specific purpose, however where the game particularly excels in its music is in its combat themes and more sad/somber pieces. Did feel like there was recycling from FFXIV’s soundtrack though, as I could repeatedly make out the same tune/melodies.
• Sound Design (9/10): Yeah, it’s triple A sound design alright. Hard to not give a triple A game a solid score for sound design these days since it’s expected to be done competently. Does the job well for whatever environment you’re in and accentuates gameplay when you use Eikonic abilities. Also great sound design during high energy, action packed cutscenes.
• Voice Acting (9/10): Pleasantly surprised to find that the English voice acting for this game (what seems to be the default anyway) was satisfactory at its weakest, outstanding at best. Just to be clear, this is distinct from the dialogue writing which I’ll cover down below, this is simply a rating for the delivery quality alone. The main cast has a great lineup of voice actors/actresses that put real effort into line delivery, ranging from humorous and lighthearted to serious and sorrowful. Cid, Clive, and Lord Byron in particular were standout quality. The general NPCs also had surprising polish to their lines, so I’m glad to say I never felt like anyone was phoning in their performance. However, there were a few moments in the game where the voice acting took unexpected turns in their delivery and gave me a good gaggle (e.g. Clive’s infamous “I’ll fucking kill yOuUuUu” and Hugo’s “Fuuuuuuuuuerk” in his scene talking to Sleipnir).
• Cutscenes (5 to 10/10, 7 overall): Many highs, many lows. Best of the cutscenes involved either dramatic/touching moments between characters as well as absolutely mind-blowing action sequences during major Eikon fights. The worst of them involved mundane exposition that lasted way too long, as well as the insane frequency of how often you’ll be watching them. It gets bothersome to walk 20 feet as Clive only to lock myself into watching another long cutscene with zero merit to the story or characters. I’d also argue there was an unproportional amount of cutscene time to actual gameplay. Not all cutscenes were made equal either, as the switch from A tier cutscenes to B tier ones could be somewhat jarring (ProZD’s cutscene to gameplay parody comes to mind). Very mixed bag on this point, but I’d say the highs generally beat out the lows.

Gameplay

• Combat (6.5/10): Gradually went from being dashing, genuine high speed fun to “button mash mode” with little to zero tactics. Normal/elite mobs are laughably easy. Boss fights are by far the best part of the combat experience, specifically the Eikonic battles. However, they still ultimately boil down to breaking stagger and wailing on them with Eikonic abilities. Didn’t care for the QTE sections all that much, which make up a big portion of Eikonic fight sections.
  • There’s definitely a lot of potential for gameplay expression, since the bread and butter of combat revolves around Eikon abilities and swapping between them to find different combos/playstyles; however it’s not really worth delving that deep for a couple reasons:
    • Juggling combos are reserved for light (aka fodder) mobs only. The same mobs you can easily clear with just single Eikon abilities. Not much incentive to draw out those fights any further besides flashy YouTube montages.
    • Elite mobs + bosses ignore aerial knockups/knockdowns and the only way to deal decent damage on them is breaking their stagger. Throw in huge health pools and the incentive becomes saving most of your Eikonic abilities for that damage multiplier bonus.
    • Bosses become increasingly AOE heavy, mobile, and can straight up cancel Eikonic abilities. Doing long-winded combos gradually becomes more of a risk due to either the boss moving away during a combo (wasting DPS/cooldowns) or dealing heavy damage during it (forcing you to either defend or continue while tanking damage). Unless you’re limit breaking or you’ve broken stagger, don’t expect to do many fancy combo sequences.
  • Lack of additional combat tactics also takes away from incentive for gameplay expression. There aren’t any other combat systems like elemental considerations or status debuffs/crowd control except knockups/knockdowns, Garuda’s pull on half-staggered enemies, and Shiva’s freeze which to my knowledge is the only status effect you can inflict on enemies. Why not include unique status/elemental effects for other branches then? Burn damage on Ifrit/Phoenix abilities/attacks, constant chain lightning/shock buildup on Ramuh, Titan grounding/rooting enemies etc. A glaring example is using Fire Eikon skills on Flame Bombs with no repercussions; typically in any other RPG this would heal that type of enemy. As an FF game this is a sorely missing feature, and no other systems are in place to compensate for the lack of.
  • Lack of party member control/loadout/strategy further adds to the problem. Party members are totally AI controlled and only travel with Clive when the story deems it necessary. You can’t pick who's coming with, change their actions/skills, swap gear, buff them, and they can’t die or be downed, taking away any sense of their involvement when fighting. Quoting someone else’s take on this, the party system is really just Clive and Torgal + whoever happens to be tagging along this time, and that’s a shame considering what this game’s take on the party system could’ve been.
  • My playstyle ending up veering towards easy crowd clear + high DPS Eikonic abilities for boss stagger, using normal strikes and the occasional ability to shred stagger gauge (eg. Raging Fists/Gouge). Rinse & repeat all the way to the endgame which felt great at first, then ended up repetitive towards the end.
  • The biggest critique on combat I have is that as snappy and fluid combat is, there just aren’t really any other deeper considerations/mechanics on how to approach fights. The Eikonic ability combos can be as complex as you’d like, but if enemies themselves offer no reasons to engage you in further thinking then why waste unnecessary effort? Add in the gigantic health pools on some mobs/bosses and you’ll always feel a level of tedium that accompanies combat due to how dull only button-mashing becomes later on.
• Exploration (2/10): What exploration? There’s virtually no good reason for off-roading during travel other than meager material collecting and sightseeing, which usually ends up being more of the same sights. I love looking at beautiful game environments as much as the next person, but if developers don’t put anything else in to capture interest, I’m moving on. A shame considering how beautiful/majestic areas look and the size of certain maps.
  • No sense of authentic revelation. New side quests always automatically show on the map, and 90% of them originate within towns and the main hub. Alliant reports make the process of finding quests even more hand held since you can just talk to a guy to teleport you directly to that quest zone. Because you will always know beforehand where all possible activities are, it takes the mystery and discovery out of exploration. The exceptions to this are bounty hunts and chronoliths, but their exact locations are remedied by online guides and don’t feel worth casually meandering around for.
  • Exploration feels constricted despite knowing the game is more linear than open world. You can’t find new areas without the game telling you that you’re allowed to go there. The game will lock off certain routes or sections until the overall game progresses further, funneling your focus on only the current objective. When those areas do even become available, they usually sit as empty lots for future bounty hunts or quests. No explorable dungeons, groves, villas, or locations you can just naturally come across and go “oh cool, this is a new spot I wasn’t expecting, let’s see what’s here.” This game tries alluding to open area exploration when at its core, it’s really designed to be strictly linear; other games have done a better job combining those two design elements.
  • Item/loot discovery is awful. Let’s say at the least, you do end up going to non objective-related areas anyway to discover some sweet potential mystery loot. Well, the most you can expect while exploring outside the current objective is hilariously low gil drops, even more crafting materials, and in extremely rare cases, new gear that quickly gets outscaled anyway. Chests offer the biggest rewards but again, just ends up being more of the above. Didn’t even bother picking up blue item markers after the halfway point of the game.
  • Overall, personal exploration gives almost no incentive to dig up even most of an entire area, so you end up just sticking to the main path with little regard for what you could potentially encounter outside of that. Obviously FF16 isn’t meant to be an open world, but given how open levels can be and the obvious intention to have players delve outside story areas, it ends up feeling devoid and a waste of potential anyway.
• Story/Free Traversal (6/10): Getting around in the game can be annoying at times due to a couple of factors. This ties in a bit with exploration but deserves its own score.
  • No manual sprinting. Why on earth did the developers think delayed auto-sprint was a better idea, since tapping L3 (the good ol' sprint button for most games) currently has no function anyway? You also can’t sprint in towns or hubs, and seeing the amount of backtracking you’ll have to do (especially in the main hub), being locked at times to a slow jog or inconsistent speed only gets more aggravating over the game’s length.
  • Chocobo riding is great, but the amount of times I’d get stuck on terrain or a tree while mounted was annoying in its own right. Again it seems unnecessary to restrict chocobo travel in towns/hubs when there’s plenty of space to just shoot through. What might explain that is your mount weirdly not having a medium speed, she either goes at a reluctant pace or full steam ahead(still, why this design?). Also, the process of dismounting could be smoother especially when entering combat (the full stop, camera shift, and slow dismounting really kills the momentum. Elden Ring’s, hell even Diablo 4’s mount system does this better).
  • Overall traversal is repetitive, as most of it is jogging on the same dimensional plane with the occasional slope, ladder, or elevator, and holding R2 to open a door or bust a wooden barricade. You’re telling me Clive can Phoenix shift 20 feet into the air but he can’t get over a damn carriage on the road? (Design reasons, I get it. But Phoenix shift traversal would’ve been dope as hell actually.) Level design is also uninspiring and lacks interesting deviations off main paths. Not asking for Dishonored degree of level design or Uncharted monkey swinging/wall climbing, but this aspect was extremely linear and basic. This lack of creativity in movement made certain dungeons and levels feel quite monotonous, made worse by how long they lasted (I’m looking at you Apodytery dungeon).
• Side Content (4/10): Barebones. As mentioned before, there’s only really two other activities you can do besides the main story and side quests, those being the bounty hunts and chronoliths. Bounty hunts has some cool bosses to fight, no complaints there. Chronoliths are kinda hit or miss, that is if you enjoy slightly frustrating combat time-trials for accessory rewards that marginally increase Eikonic ult damage. The problem with these two activities is that 1) there’s only two of them and 2) they’re just more combat segments, which the main/side quests already have plenty of. Strange to see in an FF game, even though the game world and locations are quite diverse. A cool idea could’ve been introducing region specific activities (e.g chocobo racing in Dhalmekia, colosseum fighting ring in Ironblood, a competitive sport unique to Sanbreque, Hideaway club activities, etc). Given previous titles’ efforts to add gameplay variety, it exacerbates the issue of not having that much to do in the game aside from main/side quests.
• Progression/Itemization (2.5/10): Another huge disappointment considering this is being labeled an ARPG game, FF or not. What they have here feels nearly insulting and regresses on the ARPG systems of other games including previous FF titles. Clearly, little thought went to designing the part of an “RPG” that helps define it as such.
  • Progression feels handed and not earned. The campaign alone gives you everything you need just to beat the game in all aspects. Proactive play doesn’t net the player anything aside from an extra level bump, crafting materials for the next weapon the game hands over, and more gil to buy overpriced orchestrion rolls with.
    • Leveling doesn’t have merit. The majority of exp comes from main/side quests as well as bounty hunts, and you get relatively little from doing the standard grinding off of mobs. Leveling crawls to a slog around 40 and since most enemies always scale closely to you (especially after the Akashic takeover), it’ll often feel like you’re constantly hitting the ceiling on progression. The campaign alone ensures you’re always ready for the next part just by playing it, but honestly I reckon I could still complete the whole campaign locked at level 30 with mid game gear.
    • Gil is largely unspent and hoarded for most of the game. The only reason to ever spend gil is for more consumables and some gear that gets outscaled anyway (more on that below). No need for purchasing crating materials, you’ll get plenty from just playing, trust. The biggest expenditure of gil isn’t even on anything significant or important to gameplay, it’s to buy songs for a jukebox. 40k per? Really. I ended up buying entire drinks for the entire Hideaway every now and then just to feel like my gil was going somewhere, and even that felt like a waste of money (there’s not even a cutscene for this. You get a crowd-cheering audio file and a fadeaway to black. Do it four times and you get a trophy towards platinum achievement. Woo). What would’ve been a fantastic alternative would be having a happy hour get-together event and unlocking more dialogue with the various Hideaway NPCs.
    • Visual customization didn’t need to be here, but it could’ve helped. Not saying visual character customization had to be a feature in the game or that other RPGs haven’t visually locked their playable characters like FF7R, but visual customization definitely could’ve helped to counter the lackluster progression/itemization as it were (which FF7R had ample compensation for). Seeing your character visually change over time can certainly add to the feeling of progression, and there’s little of that here, as 1) the campaign changes Clive’s looks only twice on its own (not including the prologue) and 2) the only gear that can visually change is your sword (which admittedly does have cool design variations). There’s also no additional weapon types besides a one handed sword, so no customization there. Wasted potential given it’s the latest mainline FF iteration. \*Side note: it’s hilarious how Clive goes running around in his father’s totally inconspicuous black red armor, bare face and all while trying to conceal his identity as the most wanted outlaw in the Twins. People really be hitting him with that, “Hello fellow traveler.”
    • New Eikon abilities and upgrading them are about the only real sense of progression. Even then, the Eikon skill tree is rather simplistic in that you get a new branch of 5 abilities that either 1) deal more damage to a single target or AOE, and 2) knock enemies up for aerial combos and knockdown attacks which again, is only applicable for light mobs. The exceptions are some of the ults with more unique effects (shoutout to Gigaflare and Diamond Dust) and Garuda’s pull/Shiva’s freeze as mentioned before.
  • Itemization is a complete joke. I’m completely floored by how meaningless this aspect of the game was designed to be. I hate to sound like a boomer that can’t handle any sort of changes in game design, but this isn’t even new or innovative. It’s just bad.
    • You only get 3 gear (weapon, belt, bracer) and 3 accessory slots to think about. All your gear is just flat increases to your core stats with zero additional or unique effects/affinities. Due to the game practically handing you better gear with minimal increases all the time, it makes gear itemization virtually absent and head empty. Eventually you’ll stop caring for that new sword that gives +5 attack/stagger that’ll be replaced a chapter over.
    • Accessories are marginally better in that they provide more unique effects that can alter gameplay, but not by much. The important ones are basically Eikonic ability cooldown reduction, Eikonic ability damage, and increased duration/efficacy of consumables. Even then, these effects are still somewhat negligible.
    • Non-healing consumables give nominal utility, the only 3 being stoneskin (defense buff), strength (strength buff), lionheart tonic (limit break generation), and Last Elixir (all stat buffs + full health and limit). If you’re a pro-gamer and never get hit, you’ll only ever use 2 out of a whopping 6 consumable types, not even gonna bother counting the Last Elixir because you only get 1 in the entire game. Other ARPGs like Elden Ring, Diablo, BoTW, Witcher 3, hell FF7R and 15 make 16’s itemization look like it came from a mobile game.
    • The crafting/upgrading system is extremely trivial. The only reason you’ll ever use the in-game smith to craft gear is for rare/legendary recipes, of which most come from the campaign itself. Crafting normal gear is futile since it can just be straight up bought from merchants, so crafting somehow gets even more redundantly pointless. Upgrading also becomes ineffective since it’s tied to only normal gear, which only goes up to +2 in the first playthrough and gets consistently beaten by rarer gear. I know I said I wouldn’t bring up New Game +, but because eventually you can craft the Ultima weapon, no other sword matters because it quite literally is THE best weapon in the game. No special effects or anything, just has the best stat block period. There’s also the best belt and best bracers you can get by virtue of having the highest stat block and nothing else. See how this is a problem in an RPG? If the crafting/upgrade system benefits only a tiny percentage of all possible gear, then you know something’s gone terribly wrong with gear diversity and scaling.
  • The desire to appeal to both newcomers and old fans of well-established franchises often ends up upsetting both sides, even though having both is important to a game’s continued success. Had they just scrapped this entire aspect and labeled FF16 as an arcade hack-n-slash, this would be less of an issue for people expecting something a little deeper, especially considering it’s a mainline FF title. Don’t bother implementing a system if it’s going to be this bareboned, there’s a fine line between simple/accessible and superficial.

Story

• Main Story (7/10): Mixed but overall enjoyable. Let me just say that the first half of the story wholeheartedly captured my interest and really got me going for both the main cast and the whole of the Valisthean world. The second half was…well good, but not as compelling as the first. Definitely one of the better FF stories I’ve experienced, but I wouldn’t put this in a top 10 list of all games.
  • This story starts off on solid footing. I found Clive’s initial arc, as well as the setup of the cast, villains, and political landscape to be extremely promising. Betrayal, corruption, and colluding are at the forefront of this bleak reality. A plague aptly named the Blight is creeping ever so gradually over the lands of Valisthea, causing the nations and its peoples to steer towards erratic maneuvers to ensure their own survival, but at the cost of others’. Clive continually struggles to find reason and hope to stay in this bleak, harsh realm that seems to have abandoned all but the most powerful and influential of figures. As new developments and entities reveal themselves to Clive, over time he embarks on a journey to not only save himself and his loved ones, but all of the peoples in Valisthea that only want to live and die on their own terms instead of being shackled to the wills of apathetic tyrants. And then…
  • Suddenly, there’s an out-of-pocket shift in the focus on the goals of the main protagonist/cast from a compelling and grounded narrative to basically a convoluted, anime level, high-octane plot that almost forgets the narrative that was originally presented, namely the ultimate showdown against the largest threat to the world itself, Ultima. A big challenge in story-driven games is when multiple subplots and developments need to be juggled alongside the main chronicle, but competent writing/pacing allows for all of that to ride alongside each other to the end while maintaining the overall vision. To me, FF16 maintains that balance until a little past the midpoint and ends up dropping the ball. Not that I found the endgame story to be horrible or anything, it just starts overpowering an initially compelling narrative for a predictably eccentric and cliché final act. Could’ve been handled better is all I’m saying.
  • FF16 constantly flip flops on what kind of overall story it wants to tell and what the takeaway themes should be. For example, throughout the game the story repeatedly insists on the theme of strong camaraderie and deep bonds rather than solo acts of heroism that will save the world, yet made the final act of actually saving the world just that. The pacing also feels inconsistent at times, especially when the main campaign gets treated like a side quest with menial tasks (wow, another secret club badge?) or when Clive has to meander through insanely long story segments with no variations until he confronts the next boss (again Apodytery, I’m not letting you go).
  • And the ending felt kinda bummer seeing as how it doesn’t do anything to wrap up the aftermath of the world and the remaining characters’ fates after the game’s end. It does end on a final, extremely touching moment, but one that centers on a few characters and no one or nothing else. This feels off considering the narrative strongly grounded itself in team effort and showcasing the suffering of the world on an individual/daily basis. You’re sort of just left wondering what the hell happened to everyone and everything else. Though there is a short epilogue cutscene that alludes to the aftermath potentially decades after the main story, it was way too simplistic to provide satisfactory closure.
  • Mildly disappointing to see it end the way it did, and given how great the first half was I’d say overall it was an okay campaign that could’ve been amazing instead.
• Worldbuilding (9/10): This part of the game is done super well, as the writers clearly did their due diligence in fleshing out the numerous locations, monsters, factions/nations, conflicts, lore/mythology, and overall life of Valisthea.
  • There’s an in-game loremaster you can visit to check up on entries for new developments or discoveries. Another character has a similar function allowing the player to view the current state of the world’s politics/conflicts/events (though I never really used it due to its cluttered UI).
  • I do wish they’d expanded a little bit more upon religion in the game (like Greagor and the Founder); as it could’ve been an interesting tidbit to integrate into the overall story. It’s interesting that the Eikons themselves aren’t outright worshiped as gods by any faction. The Iron Kingdom’s religion is also somewhat vague and contradictory (according to the wiki: The citizens worship crystals and view Dominants as unholy; any Dominants found to have been born on there are to be executed. However, they are not above using Dominants as weapons of war to give themselves an advantage in their raids. Uh…why execute them at all then?)
  • That being said, it showed that the writers were serious about making sure all events occur in accordance with one another and that the state of the world was constantly updating with the campaign. Different areas of the game reflected different cultures and standings while coexisting with each other, adding further to player immersion. The success of this aspect compounds on how simplistic the ending was unfortunately.
• Character Development (6.5/10 overall): There’s some development here, some development there, but never really a consistent amount throughout. Firstly, it’s quite obvious the majority of the character development went to Clive as the main protagonist. He goes through several arcs of having to fail, experience loss, gain insight, etc. Witnessing Clive Rosfield’s journey throughout the game was a most compelling experience, but after the final timeskip his characterization does become a bit stagnant/one-note though still enjoyable. The same could be said for the rest of the cast, albeit without the development Clive got.
  • Supporting Allies (6/10): Though these characters have some side quests to further their backstories and motivations, none of them really experience as dynamic of growth as Clive does. Not that they should equally compete with the main protagonist of the story, but at the story’s end I felt that most supporting characters were identical to their beginning counterparts. All of Clive’s close allies largely orbit around Clive to support his development and don’t feel like individuals with personal ambitions, opinions, fears etc. that happen to share Clive’s main goals. Perhaps the biggest letdown of all was Jill, arguably the second most important character after Clive aside from Joshua, who also fell a bit flat in his development but still had a compelling part to play. Served mostly as a love interest/damsel in distress/”yes” companion to Clive, with zero dynamic change over time (besides a revenge arc that completely mirrors Clive’s) and a personality as deep as a cookie pan. It could be forgiven seeing how she was the Iron Kingdom’s slave for 13 years, but I truly felt that the writers had no intention of fleshing her out past that point. Really, there’s little development in anyone but Clive for the most part.
  • Villains (5/10): Unfortunately these guys fall off even faster than Clive’s allies. Typically most villains don’t go through personal development, rather it’s well crafted motivations/personalities/deeds that make them appreciated by the audience. In FF16, few villains get a bit of that treatment, namely Benedikta Harman and Hugo Kupka. Nothing that would earn a spot in the hall of fame for well written villains, but an alright starting point for the rest of the big baddies. Unfortunately, the rest of the villain cast eventually become one dimensional and mostly serve as villain fodder for Clive to cut down. Two important villains (Barnabas and Ultima) in particular were letdowns, given their mysteriously intriguing buildup and proximity to the story’s end. It got to the point where I audibly groaned every time they popped up in a cutscene, as they’d become caricatures of goofy, old-timey villainy with little depth. The villain cast started super promising and then ended up being forgettable other than their fantastic boss battle sequences.
• Dialogue/Personality (6/10): Same deal as character development, there's an inconsistent amount. Usually with story driven games, it’s crucial to have compelling characters with unique, enjoyable personalities and dialogue to bring to the table. You get to understand who characters are, why they are, and ultimately they should convince you to follow their journeys to the end. This is another point that started strong in the first half, then fell down the stairs and rolls out the door in the later half.
  • Gameplay dialogue when party members travel with Clive is minimal and is bound to the latest conflict, is mission/work related, or simply about that objective in the distance, then pure silence the rest of the way. This applied to both overworld and campaign gameplay, and there were definitely periods of awkward silence that could’ve been filled with additional exchange/banter between characters. The gameplay dialogue itself was serviceable but could’ve used deeper characterization to really embed the characters’ presence in the audience’s mind.
  • In the late game, the dialogue and character personalities become surface level to the point of exhaustiveness. Characters stop speaking to each other like believable, interesting people; rather conversations start sounding like generic stage play scripts that ChatGPT cooked up. Inspiring, charming, funny, moving, or compelling scenes become scarcer over time (there could’ve been more scenes like the one where Clive proves to Byron that he’s his nephew by acting out his uncle's favorite play and the two tearfully reunite, or when Prince Dion confronts his father on Olivier’s true nature and how he’s been corrupted by Ultima, all while inciting mutiny on the royal crown. Bangers). The amount of self-loathing that goes on with Clive and others gets to be weary to sit through, there’s just a lot of it. Villain dialogue also eventually becomes monotonous and drawn out (seriously Barnabas and Ultima, shut the hell up). Nothing most villains say would compel Clive let alone the audience, it’s mostly generic villain babble with no thought-provoking or considerable takes whatsoever. The notable exceptions to lackluster characterization were Cid, Gav, Mid, Tarja, and Lord Byron, but everyone else stopped appealing to me as they just started to lack charm and/or depth.
  • I’d point to the rebooted God of War franchise (Ragnarok in particular) as the golden standard for how to write persistently fascinating characterization for all characters, protagonists and villains alike. FF7R and 15 did better in this department as well. FF16 could’ve used so much more of that to enhance the story experience and unfortunately it didn’t.
• Sidequests (6/10): The story writing for many sidequests was actually, well, really decent. Some of them were legitimately compelling and truly added to the overall narrative of the story/world, e.g. the Chloe side quest, Rodrigue’s tattoo dilemma, and Theodore/Eloise’s tragic conclusion. But, not all of them were as narratively captivating sadly.
  • Many side quests still default to “oi you, actual leader of the outlaw movement, I need you to do this menial task that literally anyone else beneath your station could do.” On top of that, the general gameplay structure surrounding side quests is atrociously boring, even the ones with the good stories. Go to X spot, slay X enemies and/or pick up 3X things, return to NPC to watch a B tier cutscene, and get rewarded with even more crafting materials. Rinse and repeat. No new, innovative gameplay or interactive segments are ever paired with these side quests besides “go kill/collect X.”
  • Same thing goes for the bounty hunts and chronoliths. Show up, kill, get mildly rewarded, go home. It’s egregious to see MMORPG style gameplay pop up in a triple A title (then again, it’s CBU3), and it’s a shame they didn’t have the wit to create more engaging structures to accompany the otherwise great story bits with side quests.

Miscellaneous

• Performance/Technical Issues (8/10): FF16 was mostly a smooth experience and I don’t recall ever coming across any major bugs/glitches, which is a miracle given the state of game launches these days. Loading times were also insanely fast, big plus there. However, some issues did arise during gameplay.
  • FPS drops occurred to the point of noticeability, notably during some major Eikon boss fights and high density environments. This happened even on quality mode at a capped 30 FPS, going as far as low 20s. Performance mode also experiences FPS drops under the same conditions, rarely hitting 60 FPS as intended except during combat. Would not recommend playing on performance mode except during combat when you need the extra frames for responsive inputs, the upscaling looks awful and diminishes the graphics.
  • Enemies can potentially reset themselves if they somehow leave their combat zones even if you’re still engaging them. Biggest example of this was fighting a Bighorn early on in the Three Reeds area. This mf suddenly reset twice during combat just by charging out of its own combat zone, making me have to fight this blasted bovine three times over. Happened a few more times with smaller enemies, but stopped occurring for the most part so this may have been either a bug or an oversight in design.
• Replayability (5/10): Everyone’s got their own reasons to replay a game, but this one’s gonna be a one-timer for me unfortunately. The only reason I can think of would be New Game +, although I can only imagine more of the same just with superficially newer gear/mobs and a staggering level cap of 100, which doesn’t seem appealing. Sitting through the 40 hour campaign and side quests again would be enough for me to end it all so heck no to that as well. I won’t be replaying this even for New Game + but if DLC ever comes out or I’m feeling particularly frisky, it may be worth going back for. Hopefully others can get more mileage out of it than I did.

Concluding Thoughts/Recommendation

Combining all scores nets this game a 6.5/10, which I'll round up to 7/10 for final score because I still truly appreciated the parts of the game that were done well. I really, really wanted this game to win me over to the max. Ever since the disastrous train wreck that was FF15’s development cycle and its ambitious but ultimately flawed essence, I’d hoped the next title would bring the franchise back on the right track. The breathtaking highs are in the bleak, epic storytelling, Clive’s personal growth, and phenomenal Eikonic cutscenes and combat. Unfortunately, the lows were in pretty much everything else. This definitely isn’t a “must-play” or “GOTY” contender in my book, but I’d still recommend it based on the positive qualities alone. Definitely wait for a sale though, $70 USD doesn't quite feel like a good asking price.

There's an argument to be made for 16’s place in the franchise and I applaud CBU3 for their part in attempting to make their first mainline FF title, but the most important thing is that they get honest, constructive feedback on their work here so that they bring that new knowledge to the next title they work on, FF or not. For those that've beaten the game, share thoughts and lemme know if anything I said resonated or was completely off the mark.