As someone who first got into this franchise in 2020 with the original FF7, this is the first new mainline FF game I've had the chance to play right when it was new. It also seems to be deeply controversial on this website which honestly isn't surprising at all.

As for my take, I found FF16 to be utterly brilliant. Valisthea is easily the most grim world we have experienced so far filled with war-torn landscapes that are slowly dying due to blight, slavery, and mass injustice and violence. But this grimness is juxtaposed with what might be one of the most hopeful stories in the franchise. The theme is a take on the very classic "the indifferent cruelty of the universe vs the indomitable human spirit" story. With an uncaring God looking to fix his world by trying to rid humans of their Will because he believes that is what had led to its undoing even though it is ultimately what will save this world. Clive is an excellent protagonist and is deeply explored thanks to the setup of this being a character-action Final Fantasy game. Despite this setup though, the supporting cast is also very lovable with the likes of Joshua Rosfield, Jill Warrick, and Cid being my personal favourites. The combat also goes hard, it is fairly challenging at times but it isn't really oppressively difficult. There are also a ton of options available to the player thanks to various skills offered by the Eikons that can be switched out during battle. How could I even talk about combat without mentioning the absolutely incredible boss fights though? A lot of them are nearly or even over an hour long which would normally drive me nuts but the absolute spectacle(and forgiving checkpoints) allows them to still be incredibly enjoyable and harrowing. The music is also absolutely beautiful, every new track I heard stood out and I even caught myself humming along to various boss tracks. The graphics are also amazing and it is the first time in this gen in which I could really say I've played a next-gen game that truly couldn't have been made on last-gen tech.

As for flaws, my main complaint is some pacing issues in the middle with sort of mundane quests at that point but I feel as though the rest of this 35-hour adventure made up for it. Play this one when you get the chance

After well over 2 months, I've finally beaten the fabled Tears of the Kingdom. This game didn't even feel real for the longest time before it came out so I didn't really feel the hype until right at the final trailer where I was like "oh shit this is the sequel to one my favourite games ever".

Now how does it stack up, it's definitely fantastically put together as it weaves together significantly more interesting puzzles and enemy variety. However, this innovation in gameplay comes at the cost of an interesting story or lore. It really feels like the devs came up with all these new mechanics and the fact that they wanted Link to fight Ganondorf in the end and cobbled a story together after the fact, which is saying a lot since BOTW's story isn't really much to write home about either. The shrines are better, the Zonai abilities are way more fun to mess around with than the Shekai powers ever were, and the core world is still as fun to explore as it was 6 years ago thanks to the additions of the underground and sky as well as improved dungeons. However, something really weird happened with the combat balancing here, it's like they played Elden Ring and lifted the problems I had with that game's damage output and put it here but ultimately it is a lot less extreme as Zelda is more forgiving and is a lot less combat heavy.

Overall, The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom is a game I would recommend to basically everyone with the caveat that it contains higher highs but also lower lows than BOTW. This shakes out to it being about the same in terms of enjoyment if not a little lower due to some factors such as me simply being younger when BOTW launched. I really loved this one(fyi it's like a 9.5/10 but I round so deal with it).