Prior to this release I actually felt myself falling off the franchise a little bit.
Not that it was generally dropping off in terms of quality, just that the two prior games "Ishin" and "Gaiden" weren't really my favourites this series had to offer.

Still though, I was exciting for this one seeing how 7 was such a confident establishment of a brand new genre shift to turn based gameplay, and how wonderful Ichiban Kasuga turned out to be as a protagonist.

Now that I've hit credits, I'm rather thrilled to say that this has now wormed its way into being one of my favourite entries.

I'll begin with talking about characters and gameplay, then moving onto world and story.

THE CHARACTERS
In terms of character writing this is by far the best RGG has done, every party member feels rich in terms of backstory and have such vivid personalities that it is incredibly hard not to be endeared to them after bashing a few heads.
The "bond" system has been expanded to include a bingo cards. In essence, there are spots in the map where the player character and party member can talk about a variety of topics. From a friendly game of Sega Bass Fishing to starting a band.

These events are incredibly frequent and each one you unlock helps you complete that party member's bingo card. Upon completion of the bingo slots you receive bond points which unlock "drink links" which is where you have a sit down with that party member and do their side story.
Overly long explanation over, I go into that much detail because I wanted to highlight how much work went into making the crew as lovable as possible.
And how each and every mechanic builds and relates to each other. It constantly feels like you're making progress in something, even if you set out to simply run around and enjoy the Hawaii fresh air, there's always something you'll be doing.

THE COMBAT
Onto the thing you'll do the most in the open world, they also managed to refine the turn based combat to be rather gratifying and fun. A lot of the complaints I had with 7, i.e. AOE's being hard to pull off due to the AI deciding where to position your party members, an undercooked feeling job system, and exploitable attacks that felt poorly balanced, have been expanded upon and fleshed out.

You can now move your character during battle, so attacks are much easier to land as you are now in control of where you're positioned and can make adjustments accordingly.

Not only that, but the job system has been improved also.
Now there are a lot more centre's to change your job at for one, but they also went a long way to make the jobs feel more specified than before.
In 7 every job basically came down to "Move that hurts enemy but with a different animation" but now that enemies have a lot more weaknesses to exploit it makes the jobs a lot more vital.

Another issue 7's combat had was that whenever an item, for example a bike or a cone, was in between you or an enemy, your character would pick it up when doing a basic attack. The problem being that you could not control where or when this happens due to the AI taking positioning into its own hands. Now you can simply move away from the item in order to do the attack you want.

It still isn't perfect though, doing a basic attack next to another party member will trigger a "tag team attack" of sorts. Basically an animation where both characters join together to punch the enemy. However with this new addition, it can be tough to try and land a basic attack if you want to do one as the tag team (and interactable items) may leave you with no room to properly position yourself.

A simple fix for this would be a button turning off the tag teams and item pick ups, thus making it a lot easier for the player to properly control what the character does.

THE WORLD
In the marketing they prized this game as being the biggest one they've made yet, and Hawaii certainly makes it feel so.

RGG went to great lengths to make Hawaii come to life, individuals you can greet and all have lives and hobbies, sun so bright that it becomes blinding at noon, a dynamic rain system which rears its at random (which the characters always had something to say about every time it happened)

Work, a lot of bloody work went into this and it shows.
I mentioned the bonds and drink links but they don't even scratch the surface of the content available on display here.

A delivery based reimagining of Crazy taxi, an entire Pokemon game, enough wacky substories to show up 100 other games, an animal crossing inspired island to build and improve on and more.

But my favourite out of all the side content is easily Kiryu's "bucket list"
I won't go into much detail but it's rare when the optional content is this vital in expanding upon overarching thesis of your game.

Quite honestly, if you removed this side of the game then the experience would've suffered greatly. Because the core mystery isn't the strongest this franchise has offered.

THE STORY
This game has gotten a bit of flack from long time fans. Saying that the actual plot itself is very messy in places and rushed in others, and loath I am to say this but it's undeniable that this is the truth.
It's not Game of Thrones Season 8 level of "Oh man, you guys rushed this" in fact the story has so many good scenes within it that pay off on years of character development that it feels like this ending was the plan for ages.

Often times the plot feels dragged out, a tad uninteresting and basic all things considered. But it has a very obvious heart and humility that I can't help but love.

Upon hitting credits I was left with the biggest grin imaginable, the ending sequence is something this series hasn't exactly gone to before.
It felt refreshing, small and above all it was so much fun.

"Fun", that's the word I would use to sum up this game.
There is nothing to distract from its unbridled optimism and joy, and it helps smooths over the lacking moments wholesale for me.

Ichiban Kasuga and Kazuma Kiryu had one hell of a road trip, one I won't be forgetting any time soon.

"If your heart's in the right place, that's all that matters."

Final fantasy is a series I've grown to adore more and more with each passing day.

My first entry was VII. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about and while I didn't really get it at the time it was still gratifying to play one of the most famous games every made.
After that I played XV, a game I hold great fondness for but was obviously unfinished in a lot of areas.
Cut to a few years later, not having touched the series since, and on a whim I decided to pop in Final Fantasy IX and was, all joking aside, enraptured.
It was then where I truly fell in love with this franchise and saw the endless potential it carried. Since then I've jumped around, game to game, until I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase a PS5 to play...well, this.

And what did I think? I think the sidequests are ill-suited to being in a single player game of this length, there are far too many and all are borderline fetch quests with no gameplay variety to be found.
I thought the pacing was iffy in places and not enough focus was put on interesting plot moments the game implies to have happened, but you as the player did not experience.
And, while it didn't bother me personally, the turn the plot takes in the final act definitely isn't a graceful transition and could've been executed a lot smoother.

I opened up with my complaints because the remainder of this write up will be a continuous stream of gushing.

This game, while flawed as stated before, absolutely has the magic I was hoping it would. Every low point or complaint I found was counterbalanced by the most insane energetic visuals ever put to screen, and gameplay refined and fun enough to match.

The transition to pure character action gameplay was a bold and risky choice most definitely, and it does have it's drawbacks.
In prior final fantasy games the entire party felt so vital due to them having such emphasis put on them in gameplay. It's not just you as Cloud fighting Shinra soldiers, it's Cloud, Barret, Tifa, Aerith and everyone else who eventually joins the frey.
Due to the shift to a more individualistic gameplay style, the same feeling of having a constant unit of characters to connect with isn't really there.
This is not a problem XV had, as "the boys" were there with Noctis for 98% of that game, where as characters will come and go at a moment's notice in XVI.
Gameplay wise, this makes sense. As all you really need is Clive and Torgal for the combat to function at full capacity. And Torgal is also there for 99% of the game, so this is not an issue.

That gripe aside, the gameplay on display here? Fantastic.
What starts as a fairly simple hack and slash evolves with each and every Eikon you attain, you're free to try out and trade in moves when and where ever you like. Let's say I liked a move Titan had but wanted to use it with Phoenix's dash, well all you need do is upgrade Titan's move and now you can put it on the Phoenix Eikon, or any other Eikon that you like.

The possibilities to mix and match is endless and I really have to tip my hat that they managed to keep the strategic aspect of the series in tact despite the genre shift.

The issue of difficulty, or lack thereof, was discussed to death before I started my playthrough but this was not a problem I ran into at all. I chose to balance it myself by not upgrading many of my Eikon's and refusing to use any armour at all and intentionally steering away from equipping my best swords. And by doing this, I believe I got to really squeeze the most out of the combat that I possibly could. It'll be my go to recommendation for anyone I talk to who's looking to try it out.

That tangent aside, I want to return to a point I made earlier, about party members not being vital anymore. Around 20 hours or so I realised that a lot of the issues I have with the story resulted in better pacing for the gameplay. A sudden time jump being jarring story wise had also unlocked a wealth of new content to play around with, and while I'm not sure if these shortcuts were worth it in certain cases I can at least see and appreciate the balancing act they had to pull in keeping the gameplay train moving.

Shifting gear, I want to take a moment to talk about the music.
Masayoshi Soken's prior work on the franchise had been on XIV, quickly becoming a fan favourite by any who played it. After this they tapped him with the main composer position for XVI.
And how did he do?

Well, to say he knocked it out of the goddamn park would be putting it lightly.

Every track, EVERY track is good. With many exceeding to greatness. It cannot be understated how big an impact music has in this series, the stand out moments are always met with masterfully produced sombre soliloquies, blaring horns, rising strings what have you. And this game is no different.

The Eikon battles (aka: "The big money sections") wouldn't be half as good as they are without his eccentric and hype as shit compositions. "Yeah, it's cool that I'm fighting a giant rock monster. But do your HEAR the robot vocals to this track!?"

Moments like that just endear me to this game so much.

One aspect I haven't spoken about yet is the story, which I will not be discussing in detail because we all have places to be.
But by the time the credits rolled I was left thinking that it was overall solid for what it set out to do, with moments of brilliance and some issues that have been talked about in depth my a plethora of podcasts/ reviews etc.

But one complaint I haven't seen anywhere is how...quiet some moments can be.
And I don't mean this as in "They intentionally chose to not score this scene so it would have more impact"
I mean it in a "This is just kind of unfinished" sense. A lot of scenes unfortunately suffer from this issue. And while the impact of these moments were not entirely lost on me, it is one place the presentation feels a bit lacking.
And it's obviously a time/budget issue, not every scene can be polished to a fine sheen but sometimes it does leave me feeling like I just walked in on two blokes talking about how they're going to punch each other real hard in the face whilst I'm trying to find the nearest exit due to awkwardness.

Anyways, I think that wraps up most of what I wanted to talk about with this one.

Final Fantasy XVI, while incredibly good in my opinion, isn't perfect. But as long as the series continues to innovate and try new things, it'll always have my attention.

My input on this isn't important at all, I'm not going to stand on a soap box and make this about myself nor my experiences.

What I can say is that this is absolutely worth your time. It is uncompromisingly honest and personal throughout it's brief 40 minute runtime and left me with a lot of emotions I'm not really sure I know how to process at the moment.

I recommend you look into the trigger warnings before deciding if you want to play it as it does not hold back at all. Make sure you are comfortable with the subject matter also.

Very good. It was very good.