It’s a part of my most hated trend in the video game industry: video games that are ashamed to be video games so they try to fool you into thinking they’re a more “respectable” art form like TV shows or movies. The mainstream hype we’re seeing is probably that it’s popular with Naughty Dog fans rather than Final Fantasy fans.

I wish these types of games would at least consistently ape more interesting TV shows and movies. Alan Wake seems like the only one that didn’t aspire to be something forgettable. I don’t even like Twin Peaks but at least it’s an identity.

This game is okay enough that I’m probably going to eventually finish it but I don’t think I’d ever feel tempted to start it again even if somehow every other option available to me were objectively worse because at least some of what’s left would be memorable enough to care about.

In general, the graphics are roughly the same as FFXIV.

The graphics are apparently deceptively good. Not immediately jaw-dropping for us lay people like the series is known for but more of a technical quality. I thought it was underwhelming on first glance but I admit I enjoy the things that video brings up now that I’ve started paying attention to them.

This. The reviews never seem to add up for the FF series. I thought the same thing about 15. Not sure who all these mega fans are nowadays, but it’s not those of us were playing FF2 on snes back in the day and whatnot. I’ve wondered about review manipulation on Square Enix’s part though I could just be majorly out of touch. It is possible that people genuinely are seeing something there that I’m not.

• Yeah, vocal animations for side quests are off, some are saying this is the aftereffect of the pandemic. They also didn’t lipsync for Japanese dub, so you might want to stick with that
• As per overworld map, it’s similar to FFX
• Side quests are very sparse around the beginning of the game, by the end of the game I was complaining at how unevenly distributed they are that they just drop large number of them before endgame. They are there to flesh out the side characters
• Not sure about graphics, but the music is by same composer Masayoshi Soken
• Is it really Kingdom Heart’s combat? I played 90% of KH games and DMC games, and I’d definitely say that it’s more DMC combat than KH, considering they hired Ryota Suzuki who designed the combat system for DMCV and Dragon’s Dogma as the combat director

If you’ve played FFX, XIII, 7Remake, Crisis Core, then you’d be less shocked by how linear it is.

I haven’t gotten too far (a bit after you unlock your second element abilities) but I agree the reviews seem odd. I think the story so far is decent. The new combat style is not what I’d expect from ff (I miss turn based) but I still enjoyed it. However I think the combat has some depth the game just doesn’t incentivize because encounters are so easy. I read people mention you could do different strategies and playstyles and rack up combos to enemies, but i never found myself using any of that because the combat is so simple you can just do your regular basic attack over and over for every fight and there’s no reward/incentive for not doing that. There’s no items or paths for making a build or strategizing fights. The gameplay feels linear and kind of filler between cutscenes of story. Leveling and gear increases stats but it doesn’t really make a noticeable difference because the game is linear and scales with you.

I wouldn’t say it’s a bad game, but I’m also confused by the super high scores. Also, allegedly they fixed this, but I found myself awkwardly trying to navigate while never using the right analog stick because the camera blur was so bad. Like maybe the graphics are good but I never saw them because every time I moved it was a watercolor painting.

I love FF, played them all and generally liked every one to varying degrees. I am about there with you overall on XVI. I liked my time with FFXVI well enough, but in my overall series hierarchy it is basically smack dab in the middle. I thought it was good but it didn’t blow me away like a lot of people are raving about. I certainly don’t regret playing it, but I also wouldn’t want to see this be the direction they take the series from now on.

I liked the characters a lot more than I expected. Story had pacing issues but overall it was good. Music was more atmospheric but generally quite well done, though thinking back to it now I can’t really recall any of the music.

Gameplay-wise though, it felt like it was lacking a lot of RPG elements. I don’t mind action combat at all, I am not a turn-based purist and I loved FF7R, but the combat in FFXVI seemed like a big step back. There really wasn’t any itemization, levels didn’t feel that impactful, and even unlocking nodes on the skilltree felt very low impact. About halfway through the game I had unlocked everything I would use until the end of the game, so skill points really ceased to matter. There were no resistances or elements, so even though the game makes a big deal about learning different magic-types (which are all 100% the same as each other), you can approach every single fight exactly the same. The big bombastic kaiju fights people loved were actually my least favourite part though. You were basically given a simplified version of the character you normally play, and they were all about 30% too long. They were a spectacle but weren’t actually all that fun or interesting to play.

I mostly liked it but ended up giving up 2/3rds of the way through.

Combat wasn’t really changing other than new flashy skills occasionally. I was fighting the same way in hour 5 that I was in hour 50. No new weapons in a game trying to be a bit of DmC meets Final Fantasy was a miss for me. Gear was basically useless as well.

I get this is personal opinion, but Clive and Jill were immensely boring to me as leads. The story was good, but had pacing issues where it was obvious they padded for time and designed it the same way they do FFXIV expansions.

I really like XVI, but could do with a different combat system. I’m really not great with super fast-paced, twitchy button mashers, so combat in XVI has been kind of frustrating for me. I might need to step back and revisit XII for a breather when I finish this game.