I'm sure I'll come back a re-evaluate this later.

I think it was fine! Good in some places, great in a few! I'm not sure if anything in the game ever surpassed those first couple of hours from the demo.

There's some amazing set pieces that I'd be hype as fuck for in Kingdom Hearts or something, but felt a little TOO intense for everything else that was going on in XVI.

I really loved the combat at the start, but by the end you never have to engage with any of the cool mechanics any more like juggling, and it's just Zantetsuken into Diamond Dust into Gigaflare, Raging Fist counter, repeat.
It's weird that there's zero difference between spells or Eikon elements. It sucks that the core actions never change after the first couple of hours. The enemies are dumb as bricks, and some more mages to mix things up is sorely needed.

The pacing with the sidequests totally sucked throughout but really killed the momentum at some key moments; especially right before the final story quest.

Some of the core cast is great, most of the baddies are good (except the main one...), many others have no personality (Jill is a real disappointment, even in her big moments).

I thought I'd be totally buzzing for New Game+, but that makes you slog through a lot of stuff I hoped I'd be able to skip, and the combat is just super spongey.

Yeah! I dunno. For all the seriousness of most of it, the last hour or so is just a Kingdom Hearts ending.

BUT, big fan of Gav, so swings and roundabouts.