Things FFXVI did well. Unmarked game end spoilers inside.

Protagonist: Clive doesn't stand out compared to other protagonists in my mind as iconic in any way whatsoever. But the more I think about him, the more I feel he was done so very, very, very well. Perhaps he is one of the best of all time, like some are saying? For me, I value there being something that sets a character apart and makes me remember them, and I'm not sure Clive really has that. His troutty name doesn't help (I loved it when he was mocked for his name by a character, I feel like someone out there was acknowledging how generic it sounded compared to the dramatic names of the past). xD But genuinely, he was well done. His voice actor was excellent, his dialogue was excellent. He didn't have much that made him memorable, but perhaps that is a little mastery from the writers in their own right in some way. Very generic, in so many ways, and yet the generic was done so perfectly.

NPCs: By which I mean the random ones scattered around the world. They all evolved with the storyline and had minor development given to some of them, too. It was really well done. This was the best payoff for exploration in the game, discovering NPCs and finding out what they had to say at one moment, and then what they said next time you walked by. Impressively done. Every time I did anything in the Hideaway that involved the progression of the MSQ, I'd walk around the Hideaway listening to what every NPC had to say. I did similar in the various towns when things relevant to either the entire world or the specific town happened. It was always worthwhile. I honestly feel like of all the parts of the game, this was actually the most well done. Not as important? Sure. But nailed it? 100% score for me. Effort was given and it shows.

Dialogue: For the majority of the game, the writing was superb. The characters felt real, they spoke like real people do, they flirted, joked, swore, got nervous, got excited, expressed all their emotions, it was generally well done. Notable characters had their own personality/background and they spoke accordingly to it.

Overarching Plot: I liked this. I felt like it worked really well. There might have been moments I felt it lacked but overall, the world plot was excellent.

Major Battles: Titan vs. Shiva, Phoenix vs. Ifrit, Clive/Ifrit vs. Benedikta/Garuda, Clive/Ifrit vs. Hugo/Titan, Brothers/Ifrit/Phoenix vs. Bahamut.
All of these battles will, without doubt in my mind, go down amongst the very best battles in FF history. They go up there with Bahamut vs.Louisoix, Bahamut vs. Alexander, FFVII Protags vs. Sephiroth and the final battle in Crisis Core for me.

Battle System: Simple and complex at the same time, and with room to play it how you like it. It was a bit easy the way I played, because I didn't feel the payoff of removing auto-combo and auto-dodge offered enough change and excitement to qualify the loss of cinematic value, but over time the fights did indeed get tougher and there were even a few times I carelessly died (comet chocobo, behemoth, and stupidly to the big dude right before Ultima warps us away in Stonehyrr he was at 1% HP because I stubbornly resist using consumables in - well, pretty much every game I play, really.

Some Villains: Benedikta, Hugo, Annabelle, even the Emperor were all really, really good villains. Ultima was okay. Barnabas was severely lacking. But the good ones outweighed the bad ones for me, I loved them or hated them and both options are excellent in my opinion. Give me a villain I want to either fix or kill and I'm a very, very happy gamer. As opposed to thinking "oh well, the game says I have to fight this guy, let's get it over with." Barnabas was that for me, and Ultima had moments of it, but the others were all people I genuinely wanted to bring down and I really appreciate that.

Companions: For most of this game I was thinking this was really, really lacking - and in some ways when I compare it to other Final Fantasy games it still is. But that's because Final Fantasy's strongest points in many of it's games are the companions we travel with, so it's a very, very high standard in my mind. But comparing the game with some other FFs and many other games, I feel like overall the companion cast did well. I think they could have done a lot more with a couple of them (hi, Jill, who was seemingly cast purely as a love interest and little else by the end of the game), but I still liked them. And the others were genuinely great. Even the minor companions, for lack of a better word for them - from Tarja and Charon through to very minor part players in Edda, Medicine Girl (I forget the name, starts with K) and Ember... they all still worked nicely.

Sidequest story content: Very specifically the story value, not the gameplay value. The story value of the sidequests for me was top tier, although a few naturally ended up not being as good as the others, overall they offered notable lore/character value when going through them, and that's what I really want from any good sidequest.

Music: I'll admit, I don't remember any particular tunes in the game. It doesn't win for iconic value there. But it does win for never feeling out of place or off, and I do remember the music quality being excellent regardless of whether or not I remember any songs off-hand. I stand firm in the camp of "voice acting lessens video game music" but it's a price I'm happy to pay for the quality voice acting we got throughout. Speaking of...

Voice acting: Perfect. Everyone. Never felt out of place.

Grit: Damn, man, they only shoved our face into the mud and dragged us through it for 30 hours before we got a single ray of sunshine. This was Game of Thrones level of grit for sure.

Graphics, cinematics, etc: Goes without saying, really. But I'll put it in anyway.

Tomes/Vivian: The ability to watch how things progress over time and to read up on the lore. There was a lot to take in at times, and this was an excellent way to go over things without having to have the game shove it down my throat (although they did that anyway with a lot of things, ha). The state of the realm thing was also superb in helping people see the big picture. Both of these character-driven systems deserve a lot of credit. Bonus points for the little sprite animations as Clive tells Tomes about the latest happenings. :D

Active time lore. Take smurfing notes, FFXIII.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Psychotic

Active time lore. Take smurfing notes, FFXIII.

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To be fair to SE, I'd argue they did take notes from FFXIII feedback and that's how they got here. Maybe I'm too much of an optimist, but I feel like Yoshi-P is the kind of guy who would read up on the feedback of previous FFs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ggD0-FN8o8

Don't give a trout this song is up there with anything in the whole series, what an absolute monster of a tune

Also:

Unintentional Comedy: This game was great for this. Unlocking the Tornado skill was a boon for amusment. Nothing better than walking into a battle with a bunch of soldiers, and just hearing "Heh heh heh well look what we have here lads, off with their he-uh uh uh uh OW uh OW uh OW AH uh OW AH uh OW AH uh OW AH uh OW AH uh OW AH uh OW AH :(:(:("

Also, my own personal favourite unintended hilarity happened after the mission where you learn about Charon's past. Get back to the hideaway, Charon goes off on her sad monologue and talks about what everyone means to her, and then the scene ends. The game, somehow, read this as Clive being idle, and one of Clive's ambient idle sounds triggered and what I got was basically "blah blah blah I am old and crochety on the surface but really you all mean so much to me thank you Clive" *Deeply exasperated, disgusted, grumpy Clive sigh*

Oh god, yes, the tornado effect. :D It's similar with the Phoenix ultimate ability too. I had that in the dungeon before Origen (I forget the name, something Rebirth) and there was an area where about 20 goons attack you, I grouped them all together and let Rebirth fly and it was beautiful. I had to switch off the tornado ability earlier because I got annoyed at not being able to see the big enemies show signs of big attack moves. Tornado's no fun when a huge laser suddenly pops out of it in your direction because you couldn't see that the monster was charging up.

Clive's characterisation and development over the course of the game was definitely a highlight for me, especially the way he opens up to the people around him and even makes some attempts at humour at times compared to the brooding loner focused only on "muh revenge" early on in the game.

I agree with you on the villains, although I did like Barnabas more than Ultima.

I also agree on the NPCs and the hideaway, and the way they changed as you did more sidequests made the experience all the more rewarding.

I agree with basically all of BoB's comments except maybe the battle system. While I agree it was very fluid and fun, I didn't like that it didn't evolve much over time other than gathering a new Eikon every now and then. The non-Eikon battles got boring quickly except for a few of the more challenging hunts.

This game did a lot of things well but they are things that other games also do well (dialogue, story, characters). It just did those better relative to recent FF games. The things FFXVI did uniquely well were the active time lore and the Eikon battles. The scale of those were phenomenal. I also really appreciated the free and at-will respec of abilities. It allowed you to customize your build each time you got a new Eikon without worrying about spending points on something you won't use in a couple hours.