While Final Fantasy 16 has so many moments of pure style and flair that still hit the second time, my overall feeling towards 16 after playing through Final Fantasy mode is just...it's fine. FF mode ups the very by-the-numbers initial difficulty, but this usually amounted to more frustrations/monotony and made the deeper flaws of the gameplay even more noticeable. The encounters are roughly the same but with higher health pools that drive tedium more than difficulty; even mixing up some encounters with a random mini boss thrown in more so pad the experience than fundamentally change it, just another Lvl 5 Zantetsuken to charge or two to move on fast. The narrative, while not without very obvious faults, felt engrossing the first time and I still love the cast, but the bloated quests and very slow pacing hurt a somewhat interesting tale of free will vs fate and freedom vs oppression, though the yikes execution of many story beats and politics makes the themes ring a little hollow. That said, the Eikon battles still feel like the most next-gen thing with so much focus and intensity wrapped in them that I can ignore the simplicity of their movesets unlike the rest of 16's braindead combat and encounters. The DLC release next year may pull me back in, but I'm not sure there's much to come back to with 16 for now.