Trails into Reverie is a wonderful send off to the first half of the Trails saga.

This game's narrative is so well thought out and the way it uses context from previous entries while not overdoing it on narrative fanservice was incredible. I was genuinely surprised the writers were able to hold back on several things that might have bogged down the game and made it feel like a simple "fanservice fest." Thankfully they avoided that and managed to smartly retcon a couple decisions from previous entries to enhance the experience.

The gameplay is the same as every other previous entry, the additions only serve to further break the combat system, even further than it was already broken. If you like turn based combat you'll enjoy this game.

Spoilers

The Chapter 2 fight where the player swaps between parties in the middle of a fight was incredible, I hope the franchise continues to experiment with that stuff in the future. Multi-party management was already a thing in previous entries but swapping side mid-battle was a true novelty, something I've never seen a game do before. Unironically so cool.

The use of the good ending of Cold Steel 4 to complete Rean's character arc was one of the smartest things in the franchise. Not since Loewe was I more captivated by an Antagonist's presence, and that is saying something.

Of course the star of this game's show is the equivalent of Sky 3rd's Star Doors. Such a great set of short stories that let us get to know our favorite characters even more.

Recommended to anyone who likes Trails, but obviously you should play the previous games first.

Full Spoilers for the entire story of the game.

Final Fantasy XVI aims fairly high. It aims to be both a course correction and an evolution of the foundation XV and XIII both laid out, while borrowing from other franchises like Devil May Cry and even a tiny bit of Tales Of in it's gameplay design.

The story has some definite ups and downs. Clive's character arc is super interesting until it seemingly ends 2/3 of the way through. The prologue is an easy 10/10, but feels deflated after knowing that Joshua has been alive the whole time. Cid is a really cool character, but we spend more time being told about him than actually seeing him in action.

The highs in this game are some of the highest in all of video games. The prologue is at once epic, heartbreaking, and brutal, the Bahamut fight puts most boss fights to shame from a scale perspective, in fact most of the Eikon fights are high points.

However, this game takes it's sweet time getting to those high points. The game has "stages" that are a bit like DMC5 stages where you walk from battle to battle, maybe engaging in some other activity like walking through a window or watching a cutscene, until you reach the boss. Then you fight the boss and boom, stage is over.

There is also the "open world," which is really just 4 maps that Clive gets dropped into. This is where all of the side content takes place, and all of the side content is incredibly hit or miss. The stages are all fun, but the side content is either interesting and reveals something about the world, or just mindless padding intended to extend the run time.

The narrative itself also feels like it takes a massive turn thematically at about the 2/3 mark. It's not outright bad, but abandoning the politics of the world in favor of a much more straightforward hero's journey felt a bit cheap in the grand scheme.

The gameplay is fantastic as expected of DMC5's combat director, but I will say that the enemy variety is sorely lacking. While the bosses are all great, I do wish they had experimented a little bit more with the stagger mechanic. I would have loved to air combo some of the human sized bosses like in DMC or Kingdom Hearts.

Overall, I have mixed feelings. The highs are so high that I kind of have to recommend it, but the downtime takes up so much of the experience that it is hard to recommend to everyone.