I was highly anticipating this game for years but I never expected it to be so amazing. Just as a baseline it takes all the elements from Pikmin 1,2, and 3 and brings them back with tons of quality of life and usability updates to boot. Miss the caves from 2? They are back and better than ever, filled with tons of different enemies, bosses, and thoughtful situations to work through. Love the multitasking abilities from 3? Also back and improved by the inclusion of the dog Oatchi who is an unstoppable force. Like the time constraints of 1? Let's just say there is some stuff in here that will be right up your alley.

Alongside all of that are new additions as well, first off having some new pikmin types obviously keeps things fresh and the ice pikmin are a lot of fun to use in combat and problem solving. Glow pikmin aren't in the normal rotation of pikmin but that doesn't make them any less fun to use, their ghostly powers are only used in the new night time missions which are a pikmin spin on tower defense. There are a little over a dozen of these and they are pretty short so they function very nicely as a pallet cleanser to shake up the gameplay.

The new dandori challenge caves achieve this as well by taking what would be normal caves and turning them into fun challenge rooms. Sometimes you need to try to get all the treasures within a short amount of time, or maybe you have to battle an AI in a pikmin battle challenge. These different modes shake things up but aren't so prevalent or long that they ever got stale to me. Add in a a neat hub world and a couple good size bonus modes with great rewards and you are looking at 30 hours to get 100% which felt like the perfect runtime to me.

Definitely a thing where they came up with the idea of having a sleep tracking app first and then had to sloppily build a game around that idea. Mechanics are just sort of thrown at you, with no attempt at telling you why you should bother doing any of this besides "maybe we'll tell you if you sleep funny after all this busy work". Also, this game has some glitch with me where the sound doesn't work if I don't have headphones, and for some reason that results in the alarm being comically quiet, so it can't even do the basic function of waking me up. Chikorita was there, that was nice I guess.

This is a game that understandably causes mixed feelings in the wider gaming audience and especially the franchise's own playerbase. That's pretty much an expectation for the series at this point, so it's hard for me to say what even my own expectations for this game were.

Whatever they were, they were blown away. I enjoyed its direct predecessor, but that game had very visible seams and glue. That's all gone here. Every decision made with the direction of Final Fantasy XVI felt to me intentional and clear. Even when it was obvious those decisions were made for budget and time constraints, I was left to believe they were the right decisions to not compromise the beautiful gem at the core of this work of art.

[Yes, it being a "Role Playing Game" is debatable ...]

I don't like formulating my opinions reactively, but I've heard so much disappointment expressed about this game's status as an RPG that I can't help but address that point directly.

I don't care about this game as an RPG. I come from the pen-n-paper RPG traditions, even to the point that I've gone back to first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons when running games for my friends (actually Old School Essentials, now, which is a much cleaner representation of that ruleset). Final Fantasy to me has always been "baby's first RPG" at its deepest.

While I couldn't resist that snarky phrasing, I don't say that disparagingly or as any kind of criticism. I've been enjoying Final Fantasy alongside the likes of Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights ever since I was a 4-year-old. Its simplification of the Western tradition has been a feature since day one and in my eyes a nice, lighter alternative.

Even FFX, what I consider the best game in the series for "tactical" combat, is still a bare as bones "RPG."

Final Fantasy XVI then isn't that huge of a change to me as it finally goes all in on being a character action game. It still has Final Fantasy grade presentation, which was the important part, and now it's also captured a bit of that classic BioWare magic with its character driven moments. One might even call it Squeenix's Mass Effect 2.

Everyone complained about ME2's lack of heavy RPG systems. It's also considered one of the studio's greatest works. Yes, this a fairly odd take. Don't think too much about it.

[... but it's a smooth and approachable "Action" Game]

Sure, you can argue that even ME2 probably has more "build choices" with the suite of weapons and power upgrades. But in my experience with FFXVI, I was regularly playing around with my combat power selections until the last 3 hours of my 60 hour playthrough. That seems like a good amount of playstyle options to me.

You know what I don't spend any time thinking about? The Green/Blue/Purple/Orange gear shoehorned into a lot of games today. Not that they're automatically ruined for it, but as an example, God of War (2018) is a game I recently played that epitomizes what I consider "tacked-on" RPG systems. None of it felt like it did anything for my playstyle.

I played Diablo 2 and especially 3 for hundreds of hours. I do not get a high just from item-make-number-go-up anymore (more power to you if you do). I do get a high from inventing and executing a series of actions that make a damage number double in size without having to even change my equipment. I got that a fair amount in Final Fantasy XVI.

And a funny thing happened as I got used to the timing of the abilities and enemies... I discovered there's an oddly deliberate amount of downtime woven between many of the actions. Abilities, especially big ones, have a tendency to have fairly long executions with either minimal additional input needed, or they outright stop time for the animation. That gave me a fairly tactical experience at points as I took a couple seconds to double check my available abilities and plot out my follow up action when was either in a bind or trying to figure out how to best capitalize on an opportunity.

Maybe the future of JRPGs has been fighting games all along.

The combat here is rarely that "punishing" but that's quite certainly because it's tuned for a narrative driven experience and an audience looking for that. I consider it quite rewarding, though, as it's fluid, flashy, impactful, and as mentioned, if you dig into its systems you get the satisfaction of completely demolishing your foes. There are a few fights that require that, as well, so it's not all rose lined paths.

[A minimal distractions experience]

This is a case where my opinion is that the only-what-matters approach to gameplay systems was the correct one. I do think the equipment systems might have been stripped a bit too bare midway through development, as they still show signs that more was once intended, but otherwise I like the very reigned in approach this game has to the content.

Maps aren't overly expansive but they have a few key explorable parts. The only real drivers are the marked story sidequests, the unmarked "hunt" fights, and some hidden accessories. Otherwise you're in it just to see the beautifully crafted world and soak in the sights. Even when the side quest log hits its longest, you can still mop it up and return to the main story in an afternoon. And for most of the runtime you'll never have much more than 2 or 3 additional objectives in a story chapter for about 3-10 minutes a piece.

Overall, my impression is that it kept its sights close to the central narrative at all times without resorting to the infamous "hallway" design. This is not a game where you can eff off for 30 hours then come back when you're bored to "mainline" it. It's a meaty, focused narrative with a few optional breaks to soak in the world and characters.

[A deluge of spectacle delivered with excellent performances]

One thing I've always appreciated about Final Fantasy is the series penchant for larger than life fantasy and imagery that I will never forget in my life. Like the opening of FFX as Sin swallows Zanarkand, looking into the Jenova tank in FFVII, or the whole city of Burmecia in FFIX.

XVI stands on equal ground for me. There's some fight sequences in particular here that I can only imagine are what the developers of the original games always dreamed of putting to the screen. The sense of scale, the color, the detail the motion the lighting —

(Breathes deep, finds calm)

It's so good.

And the voice acting and motion capture performances during the directed cutscenes, along with the most natural and nuanced writing the I've seen from the series yet, were a pleasure to see. Just as I was floored by the big moments of the game, the little moments and "blink and you'd miss it details" kept getting me too.

This is the best character work the series has seen. I won't try to argue on a subjective matter like the "most interesting cast" but I'd certainly die on the hill that this is the most "fully realized" cast in a mainline title. It's hard to sum up exactly what I mean in a way that won't bloat this review into a full thesis, but the sum of it — I think — is that they all feel "present" and in the balances they should be for their roles. And frankly they feel more "real" than any other FF character I can remember.

And the camera work and facial detail and THE MUSIC ahhhhhh—

This is a bittersweet story about the struggle to keep living and to find a reason to do so in the face of world breathing its last whispers. And every bit of it sold that for me and got me entirely invested in Clive's journey.

I love it so much.

[This probably isn't a game for most people]

I'm not going to make a pretentious claim like "modern gamers are too hooked on the digital casino of modern AAA to appreciate this game." For one because, while I've seen a lot of takes on this game's story and pacing I just cannot understand, lots of people are enjoying this game just fine. So it's not my mission in this review to make everyone "see the light."

And secondly, because I know that this game is decidedly made for people who look forward to sitting through an hour of dialogue and cutscenes between 15-30 minute bursts of gameplay (not that the game is always that balance). And the game does start light on the gameplay.

While I personally find a heavily cinematic gaming experience very natural and compelling, I can understand those who don't want that.

So I won't call this a perfect game.

But it sure was near perfect for me.

The first half of this game really pales in comparison to the second half.

While the pacing of the first half is kinda boring at times and the sidequests are terrible at the beginning, it's a carefully laid trap to get you invested in this world and it's characters.

By the time you are done with the game, you will be invested in the situation of every single one of the NPC's that live in the Hideaway.

The spectacle in these boss fights is incredible and will have your jaw on the floor multiple times. These fights are tied to a great combat system that at first looks very barebones but keeps getting crazier.

As you can see, this is the rare case where the game is not frontloaded and it actually keeps getting better as time goes on.

The only negative is how the performance doesn't really keeps up with the game, while for the most part in combat it maintains 60 fps, the drops during exploration are egregious sometimes. On the other hand, the graphics mode and its motion blur implementation are pretty bad for such a beautiful game.

At the end of the day, there are games this year that are fundamentally better this year but I doubt I will remember them as much as this one.

2023 continues to be the second coming of 2017, because here comes Square Enix with yet another game released this year that goes extremely hard. While it's currently getting a lot of backlash due to Unique-New-Entry-in-a-Long-Running-Franchise Syndrome, I'm confident that, eventually, this game will go down as an all-time great, like how the Unova Pokémon games did. While I don't think FF16 was close to perfect by any stretch of imagination, or is even Square Enix's best game from this year (I think Octopath 2 still holds that title), it's still a truly incredible and emotionally engaging experience from start to finish.

The narrative and world are very well fleshed-out, and the characters that live in it are doubly so; Valisthea really does the "damn, it would suck ass to live here" thing better than most other video game worlds do. Those small embers of hope with the Hideaway crew and the people you help around the world throughout the story make it not seem completely hopeless and bleak, adding a bit of levity to an otherwise extremely grim and depressing tale. This game's story nails its tone better than most game stories do, led by one of the best protagonists I've ever seen in a game with Clive Rosfield. His journey and development throughout the game is truly master-class character writing, and Ben Starr's performance is perfection.

While I found the main antagonist to be rather boring personality-wise, kind of like this game's version of Z from Xenoblade 3, they served as the perfect final boss for the story this game wanted to tell. What better way is there to send off a game about freedom than defeating a tyrannical god? And, that final boss sequence is quite possibly one of the best boss sequences in any video game ever made, in a game where its boss fights are already a three spectacles and a half to witness.

Possibly my only major complaint with the game was with the combat system and its sheer lack of customizability. I like to describe it with the phrase "deceptively simple." There's a lot going on and a lot of mechanics to learn with the different Eikon attacks and abilities, but unfortunately, actually playing the game reveals that it all boils down to "wail on the enemy and dodge when needed" due to there really being only one, hyper-aggressive playstyle in the end. Magic does too little damage to both enemy health and the break meter, and is too slow to charge for extra damage, so why use it? There's too little reward for not going for a hyper-aggro approach, and it makes every battle turn into a button mash fest (or, in my case, because I suck at action games, "mash ▢ for 10 minutes until you win," thank you auto-combo ring). For 90% of the game, Clive only has weapon to choose from, that being a sword. You're stuck with that until you get the last Eikon, when you finally unlock a different weapon while using said Eikon, and even then, it's just a faster, more aggressive sword; it doesn't feel any different than what you were doing before, it's just even more button mashing. Even FF15, which has one of the messiest and least fun action combat systems I've ever played, had deeper customization with its combat than FF16, as Noctis has several playstyles to go for that all feel separate from one another. Sure, the combat is really fun for the first chunk of the game, but like a box of Chicken in a Biskit that isn't properly sealed after opening, it gets progressively more stale as time goes on.

I've never really been a Final Fantasy fan; I've only played 7R, 15, most of 10, and dabbled a tiny bit into 14, but this game is easily my favorite of the bunch. All in all, FF16 is a true marvel in video games and a landmark achievement for Square Enix, in a year where they already released one of the best turn-based RPGs ever made just four months prior. It's no masterpiece, but it's certainly very close.