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?
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