FFXVI is hands down the worst of the 16 mainline FF titles, though we take no delight in this game being such a disappointment.

FF is our favourite video game franchise. We wanted nothing but to love this. There are glimpses of a game we love in FFXVI. Sadly it's maybe a grand total of 15 minutes out of the 55+ hour runtime. It has solid combat, but even that isn't as good as other action games out there and by the time you're on your 30th hour of the game it's gotten dull.

The game is a bafflingly poorly executed mess of bad writing. From its superficial understanding of oppression politics to its far too large cast of one-dimensional characters to the way the main scenario is effectively split into six mini-stories that don't flow together in either tone or narrative.

It's almost impressive that throughout the 8 years it took for FFXVI to develop, virtually every core concept within the story was done better in other FF games. Seriously, there are shards of FFXV, FFXIV Stormblood, FFXIV Shadowbringers, FFXIV Endwalker, Stranger of Paradise and more in here... all of them outclassing FFXVI on their shared themes and plot points.

FFXVI is basically a game that sums up what we dislike about AAA game design, dark fantasy writing tropes and more. Bad game.