I would prefer a world where people don't criticize it because "It's not Final Fantasy". Ever since X, they've been innovating and going various different directions.

That said, there do seem to be some fair criticisms that there's no challenge - no difficulty that forces players to carefully consider their options. Even though I don't go for the hard content in FFXIV (the MMO), I at least appreciate being punished for not recognizing boss mechanics, or for aggroing too many minions.

I'm also not hot on the art style being super dark. It was bad enough that the entire core cast of XV is all-male and just wears black. XVI does seem to have more varied landscapes as you go, but a lot of the early stuff is grim foggy castles at night.

This is not to say there's not some amazing things about the game - it appears to have a lot going for it. But it seemed to have more going in terms of production budget than creativity.

I haven't finished it yet; I think I'm about 80% through and I'm struggling to pick it back up. I agree with all your points. It is super repetitive - Same Big Story Mission vs Different Eikon -> 6 Side Missions -> 1 or 2 Hunts; repeat. I want to like it, but end of the day the cutscenes aren't enough to carry it.

I'm only part way through (a bit past bahamut) so I'm not fully qualified to comment on the game as a whole, and I'm avoiding reviews until I'm finished (also haven't played 14 or 15). So far I'm really enjoying it because it just has that Final Fantasy charm that squeenix are so good at. I love the world, the story is good (if leaning a bit too heavily on game of thrones for my liking), and the characters are likeable enough. Combat got fun once it clicked. That said...

There are a LOT of really obvious things to criticize. Over tutorialized, incredibly boring fetch quests, and progression systems that are wierdly linear and restrictive. It's frustrating because some small tweaks could make it so much better. Let me explore and discover quests for myself instead of witholding them until the game decides to make them available and then spamming me with notifications. Disable the on-screen quest markers or at least let me turn them off (the "animal instinct" feature is neat, don't need more than that). Let me upgrade my weapons past +2 and specialise them with elemental synergies so there isn't just one "correct" gear set to use at any given time. Give different merchants their own unique items to sell. Jill is an interesting character but is underused, that whole descent to the first crystal with Cid, and the cutscene that followed, she was barely given a single line. The titan fights are great ideas but not always fun to play, and too reliant on quicktime events which I thought we'd all agreed kinda sucked several years ago so idk why squeenix didn't get the memo.

But anyway yeah it's pretty and sometimes fun and I can pet the dog so it still gets a thumbs up from me I guess 乁( •_• )ㄏ

I get some of your criticisms for the game and agree with a lot of them. But I don’t see a narrow more action focused character and mechanics as a bad thing, FFXVI is basically a Japanese Witcher 3. Now you may dislike that in favor of more blank slate character development and that’s fine. What I do find a major problem in 16 is that the combat system is complete overkill for the standard difficulty as the enemy AI is extremely passive outside of the big fights. So the game doesn’t force you to really make hard choices in terms of loadout and moment to moment gameplay a la DMC5.

Also, the side quests really suck mechanically and slow down the narrative way too much.

I thought the main story was overly long. You could remove Mid and everything you do related to her to cut a lot of fat off of it. Most of that feels like an anime filler episode. And yet they still couldn’t find time to let Jill be a character for more than two scenes.

I also thought the gear and crafting systems were some of the worst I’ve seen. Whats the point of a crafting system that linear.

Still patiently waiting for the PC port, but I am a bit weary at how much it lacks RPG features from everything I've heard. Even Final Fantasy 7 Remake had a lot of build variety and a few different weapons.

SkillUp did and got a lot of shit for it, as he expected 😁 He generally disliked the direction the franchise is taking and wasn't a fan of much besides presentation, which makes sense since he's more of a gameplay oriented gamer from what I can tell.

(No spoilers)

I enjoyed it. This game for most people will land between a 7/10 to a 9/10. The music, story, and combat were all excellent for me but make no mistake. There are deep deep flaws in this game, especially on the “rpg” side of things.

1. Using FFXVs open world as an excuse to make this game zone based makes no sense after playing it. The benefit of zones is that you get to add dense content to these hand crafted maps but the zones in this game are far more uninteresting and dead than XV since they basically did nothing interesting with them.

2. The party system is just horrible. Yes Torgal is a good boy and all but the parts where you had two additional party members made the game feel so much more alive. Even from a gameplay perspective they took aggro away from you and contributed dps. Having large sections of the game where you’re alone with just Torgal is so bad and even thematically makes no sense.

3. I don’t get why they couldn’t add even basic shit like elemental advantage/disadvantage. FF7R already shows you can do this. It’s just plain lazy and using the excuse of “it makes the game harder” is baffling.

4. Locking the hard difficulty behind NG+ is such a poor way of padding out a game. It’s already statistically proven a vast majority of players don’t even bother NG+ and locking something thing like that behind a 40 hour grind is sad. I much would’ve preferred having a hard difficulty on my first play through.

Ultimately I’ve come to terms that most of the things I don’t like in this game are design decisions they brought in from FFXIV (zones, no elemental affinity, lack of party, most side quests, etc). 95% of the things I did enjoy were game mechanics not from XIV. It’s clear to me that their approach to game design from their time as MMO devs do not compliment this game. The more they stepped away from it, the better it got. But the parts that doubled down on it were very lackluster.

Criticisms aside, this game is still a 9/10 for me and sets up good ground work for their next game. And if it makes anyone feel better here, CBU3 are usually very aware of criticisms and I’m sure they’ll address it one way or another.

While I agree with you that the game fell flat in many areas, I think a 5/10 is a bit too harsh. Of course, it's your opinion and I'm not telling you it's wrong, but for me a 5/10 is a game that is barely playable, either filled with bugs, or visually an ugly mess, or just plain boring. FF16 does indeed have its shortcomings, but it is still a beautiful game that performs great most of the time.

That said, I think the game would have benefitted from a shorter story. By the end of the game I was just tired of the simple gameplay and the anemic side systems. As many others have said, the crafting is barely an afterthought, and so is the equipment and items. I did enjoy the sidequests, especially in the later half. I think they did wonders to flesh out the characters, and that's why I can't agree with OP's statements that the characters were bland. If anything, that's the strongest point in the game.

All in all, I think the game is an improvement over ff15 (although I enjoyed ff15's weapon systems more than I did ff16's Eikons), and it's overall a solid game. I also enjoyed it way more than FF7, but I think many will disagree with this take.

I do think the game does not feel like a proper Final Fantasy, but it is not due to the action combat. It's just lacking many elements of the gameplay that make ff feel like ff. No status effects (save for Shiva's freezing), no elemental advantage and immunities, no classes, no healing, basically no party. It also feels a bit smaller in scope than the traditional ff. The twin islands feel small, and thus the stakes never feel grand, even if we go against god by the end of the game. That's not to say the game is bad, it's just lacking that FFesque feeling.

Finally, Torgal bestest boy ever. Fight me.

Overall, I've enjoyed it. Some people probably criticize the combat being too easy or how quests boil down to either fetch and run from point A to B.

I didn't really mind how it played out though. I'm not great with action games, so difficulty was perfect for me. I'm also a fan of FFXIV, so I guess I've grown accustomed to the same style of quest design.

I do agree with how narrative feels slowed down due to some of the quests.

I'm about 10 hours in, it's enjoyable, but it sounds like the game is missing the depth and stats of older FF games.

I always loved over leveling in previous FF games, getting the best gear and stats, but I feel like that's missing here, the combat is a bit too involved/intense to find grinding for levels fun.

I still plan to finish it since I'm enjoying the story, but will be more hesitant on getting future FF games if this is the direction they're going.

I haven't played it yet, as I don't have a PS5, but it's funny seeing on 4chan, people looking back at ff13 and realizing it really was much better than they gave it credit.

Really fell flat for me, riddled with bad animation, fetch quests, boring dialogue, pointless crafting etc.

I really did enjoy the first hour or so, but tbh even the combat - which people praise - wasn't even as good as stranger of paradise in depth or complexity. You spent most of your time doing the same combo waiting for cool downs.

Hitting attack or dodge repeatedly isn't satisfying depth, not to mention the dodge just automatically saves you as long as its timed right the direction means nothing.

Side quests were pretty unbearable, in my whole life I've never skipped cutscenes, I skipped them all on the last 12 side quests because the voice/animation were so boring and I knew I'd be rewarded with either gil of crafting materials, both of which I had in abundance and nothing to spend it on.

If you want to lock a "super hard" mode behind ng , then fine, but the "Action focused" mode was so easy that it's insulting to lock the harder mode out, nobody wants to play a game twice to enjoy it and especially not one that's 50 hours long.

Overall, very disappointed, after seeing people rave about yoshi I thought it could be good but it was just too close to an MMO in quest design.

Edit: Oh and having no elemental or status effects in a game in which every eikon has a theme and you fight marlboros which do bad breath is just so lazy. The system was oversimplified, not complex, everything the enemy did was just a pure subtraction, nothing else. I just can't understand how they've released such a plain experience.

I'm watching a playthrough, and based on what I've seen (I'm about halfway through I suspect) I have no interest in playing the game myself. The gameplay is far, far too mash-button-make-explosion with little thought needed for strategy or intelligent-fighting. That said, the combat is quite the spectacle and I easily see why others enjoy it. More than just this though, I'm really enjoying the story.

As for your worry about the future of the franchise; who can say. I'm in the camp that argues against the "this isn't what final fantasy is" people by saying "final fantasy has always been different things". Gameplay, visuals, tone, etc has always been evolving with each game. I'll readily agree that the series has slowly been moving away from RPG mechanics though. The same thing is happening with other franchises too. I weep for what the Tales' series newest 'Tales of Arise' became. I remember Symphonia, Abyss, and Vesperia being these tastefully deep RPGs where team comp, builds, and technique were key to victory. I have little doubt the pendulum will swing the other way someday, but until then I can at least watch my Final Fantasy movie while playing other games I do enjoy.

Squenix has been running at full speed from their turn based combat roots. I don't mind turn based combat, but I also can't blame them. DMC was a very cool game and it's cool to get that guy to make your combat (although it feels more like a copy and paste than anything new or different).

What really bugs me is that the story is so heavily inspired by Game of Thrones and the combat is ripped out of DMC. That's what leads me to feel like this lacks the FF identity. It feels like they learned the wrong lessons from 15, that they think party-based and open world are no longer feasible concepts. Game of Thrones is super popular (back in 2015 when they started working on this) so lets just do everything they do.

Final Fantasy had concepts beyond the mechanics that were fairly universal game to game: a conflict between the natural world and a cyberpunk world built on top of (and killing) it. I feel like too much of the franchise's identity was lost in this, and what we got in return is a crappy knock off of Game of Thrones with Devil May Cry 5's combat stuck in it.