Final Fantasy XVI (2023)

I finished the main and all side quests along with all Hunts.

I’ll say I cheated or took the easy route with this game. I used the combo ring. So I mostly just pushed Square and R1. So I didn’t have the same experience as some would in combat.

That said combat was still fun at times but I really enjoy turn based a bit more. Not having control over side characters and being able to pick your party stuff was things I missed out on in this game.

Side characters mostly felt like super side characters. Some folks I could hardly remember their names. I expected a bit more story for them or bigger moments than they received. However I still ended up digging several. I wish we had a bit more information for Torgal. Even Jill felt a bit thinner than I had expected once the game ended. But Cid and Mid both rocked in their limited time.

Side story stuff was mostly fine. I had a few I absolutely loved like in the North Watch area with the slave beaters being a pet to a little girl or the dad and son tricking bearers to be killed by their pet wolf. Other side stuff I didn’t care as much about or just wish it gave us more depth to those characters than we actually got.

Main story took a bit for me to get into as well considering I hated the whole mystery guy and oh shocking joshu story and stuff. But once it got past that I started to dig it more. I love Ultima, love the alien/Sci Fi stuff going on too. I enjoyed the one to rule them all story for Clive and the Eikons/Dominions. The story with his mother was good. Lots of ups and not as many downs as it may seem for me, I just wanted stuff to be flushed out a bit more. Such as Dion. I wanted more time with this character for sure.

The map grew on me, I wanted a bit more detail in that area as well. For actual map size stuff I often felt the areas to be pretty tiny. But it made travel faster which is a plus.

Overall I enjoyed the game and I want to give it a 3 and a 1/2 but it doesn’t let me.

Solid Story, Characters, combat ect. I don’t think it does anything to really stand out or do anything extra new. Fun experience overall and worth playing.

(Big XVI and Game of Thrones spoilers)

As if the Game of Thrones inspiration wasn't obvious enough, they went for a full on Daenerys Targaryen madness arc with Dion lol. I have lots of thoughts about where the story has gone in the latter half of the game, and not fully positive thoughts at that. Feels like the GoT inspired things that were interesting about the story, the politics, the interestingly tangled web of relationships, all got thrown out the window for a very by-the-book JRPG final act about killing god. A lot of the early aspects of the story feel like total dead ends as a result.

I'm not done Final Fantasy 16, so please no spoilers, but I'm about 30 hours. It's probably my favourite game of the year, even if I feel like Tears of the Kingdom is "better," but I got an issue with it. I'm starting to feel the length, and that's in part because some of the main quests feel like side quests. It seems like the main quest splits into two, fetch quests (basically, though there's some variation) and actual main quest-worthy material.

The main quest-worthy material is legit 9.5/10 stuff. Going into new places, having massive battles, AAA production values, etc. When I'm in the middle of that I'm in love and don't want to put it down. But when it's not in that? I'm running around the hideout or visiting places I've already been, sometimes to collect things. The game doesn't sink too much for me because I know I just need to get through that to get to the awesome stuff, but it hurts the pacing.

Feel free to talk about anything FF16-related here, but I wanted to know what y'all thought about that specifically.