I’ve seen a lot of positive praise and sentiment for XVI even from longtime fans and I find that worrying. I finished the game and thought it was a solid 5/10 at best and was happy for it to be over. The game felt closer to Genshin Impact than it did Final Fantasy.
The music was generally quite good and the eikon battles were a fun and new take, but just about everything else I found lacking.
spoiler
- The main story retreads themes that have been told many times and offers nothing unique. It’s clear early on we are on a quest to collect the rings of power to fight the big bad who thinks the only solution to the problem is starting over.
- Most characters were flat and uninteresting
- Combat was very simple and unengaging. It was simply not fun. You can only use about a quarter of the abilities you collect (not that theres many more youd find useful enough to use anyways)
- Crafting/itemization was pointless
- MMO-tier side quests (ironic considering XIV has some interesting ones)
- Story format is lifted straight from XIV as all “engagement” quests (ones with the red crossed swords on the map) are the same as XIV dungeons (trash, minor boss, trash, minor boss, trash, major boss)
- Empty world with no incentive for exploration
- Minimal play style variety despite the different eikon flavors
- No class system (I would have expected something listed as a “role playing game” to have some sort of class system)
- No party system in any form
Overally, fairly worried about the franchise since so many people are over the moon as it implies we might be getting more of the above. It feels like XVI took heavy inspiration from XIV but did a worse job at the highlights of XIV (story, job/battle system) and straight up copied some of the bad parts of XIV.
Now that it’s been a few weeks, hopefully more people have finished the game. What are your thoughts?
For me, this game seemed a little bit lazy in the monster department, the conclusion, quests, and pointless crafting system.
The monster department for me, after awhile was the same mobs over and over. I was pulling my nonexistent hair out screaming when I was on S rank hunts and they were just bigger creations of previous mobs. I screamed at the TV: “YOU HAVE MANY SOURCES OF MONSTERS WHY CAN’T YOU USE THEM?” I was baffled there wasn’t many mobs from past games and was sad how many wild chocobos I was killing.
The conclusion… I don’t like open ended stories with questionable conclusions. I hated it in Inception and I hated it here. Nuff said.
Oh boy, the quests… what can I say? I completed them all… some were good…a majority weren’t. After listening to a lot of dialog in the game when I was feeling the endgame creep, I started skipping the talking parts.
The crafting system…I really asked myself what was the point? I easily got everything I needed during my play though and completed all the hunts and quests before the main boss so I walked in with no real worry I wasn’t going to wreck shit. I didn’t pay attention to any materials because I knew they would come so I just completed everything and went from there.
Now, to finish, was the game polished? Hell yeah. It played like a dream for me… but there were other items where I gave this game a 6.8/10 it was above average but if i compare to games i have played recently and to previous Final Fantasy games, this is where it sits. I had more fun with FFXIII.
Shockingly enough I enjoyed FFXV better because of party dynamics and that felt like an open world. I mean, as you play though the game enemies are casting brave, protect, shell and cure and you don’t get to use any of those spells? Seriously? That is quite lame. I would at least like access to BASIC spells…