final fantasy xvi reminds me of old sweeping epics, the soaring score, the large scale, the story that shifts and changes so much that by the end you feel like it was a lifetime ago, and the human spirit underlying everything. this game is long. a good 50 hours long and it takes its damn time. side quests start off mundane, very fetch quest-y and just "go here kill monster" but as the context of the world changes, so do the side quests as they involve more recognizable faces and have changes that do affect the world, though as i said it takes time to get to that. the story is the ultimate indomitable human spirit type that goes all in on it by the end so if you cant get into that, you will be sorely disappointed. good thing i eat that shit up. combat is very much like dmc 5 where yes you can just play the game boring or you can make it fun which i greatly enjoyed. its so astounding how much this game clicks for me. didnt love every minute of it, but it won me over more times than it let me down.