- 42 hours played

Final Fantasy 16 is its own worst enemy. It’s a shame because I truly love parts of this game but it’s hidden under a mountain of just needless crap and busy work. The elements it has going for it, really sing. There were fleeting moments whilst playing this where I sat there in awe, hairs on my arms stood up as I witnessed the cool shit happening on screen. But fleeting moments of spectacle are not worth a full play through of this absolute slog.

It’s reminds me of Alan Wake 2. I really had to drag myself through that game. There were some amazing highs but man the lows and the downtime, just dragged the pacing into the dirt and turned a fun hobby into what felt like a chore. I got through Alan Wake 2 because at 16 hours, the game was complete. But this game took me double that time to complete it and my god it exhausted me.

So let’s get into my issues. First of all the story. I was really enjoying this but my god the game only lets you go seconds sometimes before it wrestles control away to land you in a cutscene. Sometimes a very bloody long cutscene or even multiple. You really have to sit down with some guaranteed generous amounts of spare time to make any progress because if something comes up your fucked. The story will take you soaring into the heavens, experiencing highs like nothing I’ve played. The boss fights are truly awe inspiring to look at and combined with the music, it’s just a joy to play. But after each important victory in the story the game will grind to a violent halt. And you will go from country altering battles to the death, to collecting wood from the carpenter for some peasant. Or collecting 2 flowers for a potion needed back at camp. I would sit down with a cup of tea and eagerly anticipate making progress in the story but multiple times this was brought to a screeching halt for monotonous busy work.

Well simply avoid the busy work. I could have and around main mission 37 I started to but the rot had already settled in. I started to really hate this games pacing. Also the side quests do offer some nice world building that I didn’t want to miss out on but at the same time the tasks that world building reward are extremely mundane. I think just a focussed character action game would have been much better. Telling a tighter yet still epic tale of countries at war and shaving off the Rpg elements.

But Final Fantasy is a JRPG!! You can’t do that. Well I get that but this game is an RPG in name only. Clive levels up but your Clive is the same as mine in regards to levelling stats. The only things that change this are items Clive can wear and his sword. But they only ever seemed to offer extremely boring stat increases. Very little build diversity. And everyone will end up rocking the same sword if it’s the best in the game. The worst offender of the Rpg is the side quests though and they only ever seem to be in every game now a days to pad the run time and offer a breadth of content. It’s fucking boring. The game even includes an option to hold “Options” after completing a side quest to teleport instantly back to the quest giver and even this failed to elevate the tedium. I’ve also heard there’s some really kick ass important side quests towards the end but I stopped doing them at mission 37 out of 49 and I hadn’t run across any. That’s way too long to wait to finally get to some that matter.

On to the combat. It’s damm flashy. It can sometimes look bloody amazing but when it comes down to it, your spamming R1. And you’re spamming it a lot because basic enemies have HP for days. I’m hitting generic men with Lightning and they get back up like it’s nothing. The combat is spam R1 until your Eikon abilities come off cooldown. You use them and then manage the cool downs whilst spamming R1. Rinse and repeat. The main story missions before each epic fight are also very meh. They revolve around sneaking into a base through a back entrance or tunnel, fight your way through generic enemies in extremely linear and boring hallways and fight a boss. After said boss you fight the main boss. This is the exciting part but getting there is tedious. Also it’s quite an easy game. Boss checkpoints are generous and dying restores all health potions to maximum. Meaning you respawn mid fight with full potions even if you used them all getting to that point.

Boss fights. There’s two types In this game. Those as Clive and those as Ifrit, the Eikon of fire. The Clive boss fights are pretty cool but it’s the same cooldown management sim as the normal fighting. The Eikon fights are the games best feature but it’s all spectacle and very little engagement. Ifrit has a limited move set when compared to Clive so there’s more of violently molesting the R1 button. The fights are pretty much playable cutscenes and they are exciting but I realised the high isn’t worth the vast amount of sheer tedium that comes after. It hits harder than a backhand from Titan when I go from Nuking a giant monster to collecting soil samples.

Companions were also disappointing. Because this game is entirely about Clive. I thought Clive was great and I loved those who helped him but they never really got much time to shine. They are sidelined in the games events. Jill could have been so much better and outside of her and another I won’t name for spoiler reasons, every other companion is a step above a named NPC. They also fail to register as a presence during combat. You see them cast the odd spell but they never actually seem to do much damage or contribute.

So why did I complete the game? I would wonder the same thing after reading this rather negative review. Because I loved the world. I loved Clive, Torgal, Jill, Cid and Gav. I enjoyed the combat until I didn’t and I even enjoyed a few of the side quests. I completed it because i felt I had to after the time spent with it, also because in the first few hours I adored it. There’s a masterpiece in here somewhere. It’s buried under everything else. I think if this was a 20 hour action game, it would of easily have been 5/5 material and an utter banger. But it’s an rpg and because of that it’s 20 hours too long. It also has a complete disregard for player engagement, long periods of this game are watching cutscenes and when it does allow you to play a lot of the run time was spent in shitty tedious quests.