Things FFXVI didn't do well. Unmarked game end spoilers inside.

Minigames: There is literally nothing to do in this game except progress the plot and fight things. Genuinely nothing else. All non-quest related activities are just fighting things, too. Big miss for me. To say that FFXIII had more minigames than FFXVI is bizarre and hilarious because it's true. The game was crying out for a fishing game at minimum because there were so many bodies of water.

Staples: No victory fanfare. Two seconds of chocobo theme. No cactuars, although they are spoken of (there's a smurfing massive desert, why the smurf not have them there!?). No tonberries. No Gilgamesh, goddam. I can understand skipping some of these, but all of them? It hurt a bit. I suspect Gilgamesh might come in via DLC or something. I expected him to be a Hunt. I hoped that Victory Fanfare would at least kick in right on the last boss, just once, but no. Chocobo theme only existing for two seconds is bizarre. Should have been a random chocobo area that played the full theme, one of the stables or something. Gilgamesh has skipped the odd game (VII and X) before, but it still is sad to not see him represented here.

The Pacing: I think they needed at least the odd W amongst all the Ls we saw in the first 30-50% of the game. It was getting to the point that I was questioning whether I was going to enjoy the game at all. I'm glad that when Byron and Mid came into the group, there was a little more of an uplifting feel. People seemed to stop dying so much in the second half of the game. Was that because SE wanted us to feel a sense of progress? Perhaps. I'm not sure. But I still feel that the pacing needed work. Another part that this figures into is sidequests, which increased in count as the game went on (I prefer a bell curve to my sidequests, if that makes sense), and the lack of anything of notable interest in Waloed. The only person in Waloed that we know survived is Edda (and her then-unborn baby, I suppose). Crazy.

Leviathan/Water: It is never explained. Especially unexplained is that Ultima doesn't use Water when he churns out in the final battle. Why not? It's not like he needed to go and absorb anything like Clive had to. And it is the logical thing to fight a fire eikon with. It doesn't make any sense at all to me. And it's not explained why Leviathan is lost, or how, or anything. It's not indicated as to why Ultima is content with Clive only having seven of the eight magicks within him. Perhaps he figured he can just have the fire melt the ice :p

Jill: She deserved more depth. She was given a bit, but needed a lot more. I really liked her character, I was satisfied with how she progressed during plot points with Clive, but as a person she needed more to her, stuff that wasn't "I love Clive". She needed more interaction with other characters, since she was probably the main companion in the game, alongside Torgal.

Items/Gear: The chests are borderline worthless in the end. We get far more than we'll ever need in the game when it comes to the key components, almost nothing of note to spend our gil on, and the only consumables I ever needed were potions and high potions. The core three pieces of gear had effectively no gameplay value and could have been replaced with having one sword/belt/vambrace which was just improved upon instead of having like 30 of them. The accessories did have gameplay impact, so fair's fair on that, but to limit the actual useful items in the game down to potions (which all relate to healing and damage received/given) and accessories was meh. Most of the accessories are quickly redundant too, because some are so notably better than others. But at least they were something. Generally, I'd have preferred if the prices of things were much higher in the game, as it felt like my money was completely unrequired. I could get free potions and high potions on repeat by revisiting the right nodes, anyway, it seemed. Basically what I'm getting at is that the reward for exploring was trout, gameplay wise. Thankfully the NPCs (as mentioned in my other thread) allowed for at least some solid lore reward, which I do appreciate.

The Ending: Sigh. Square Enix are so goddam troutty with endings sometimes. The do so well with FFVIII when it comes to showing a resolution to what happens for the characters, showing them having fun. We get Edda having a baby and a lot of questions. Not good enough. In fact, I'd almost go as far as to say that this is the worst I've ever felt about an ending in FF history. But it's not completely shocking to me because my favourite game of all time is FFVII and that ending is troutty too. It's just that... there was so much buildup for what was to happen next, and no payoff. None. In a story-focused game, they neglected to resolve the story. I hate it. Judging by the FFXVI reddit, I'm far from alone. It's by far the biggest gripe people have with the game and I think that's on Yoshi-P and Takai to learn from, because they smurfed it up and no DLC is going to make it feel any better. All they had to do is give an in-game defined ending that shows Clive either 100% living or 100% not. This game dropped a point or two in my head based on the ending alone. It's incredibly frustrating because up until that point, I felt like the game was on course for an 8/10. If they resolved all the things that were built up during the side quests for certain characters, it could even have got a 9/10 despite all my grievances above. But they smurfed it up and now it's 7/10 instead, probably. My feeling at the point of finishing the game was 5-6/10 but with reflection I think 7/10 is fairer.

Honestly, overall, this game didn't have a huge volume of bad points, it's just that the bad points that did exist were generally really, really important: The ending, the pacing, the female companion, the amount of things to do.

Just something I discovered online, apparently Victory Fanfare does happen - during your training at the start and after some boss fights. I didn't notice it at all, but every time it didn't play I noticed that. Go figure.



Should've used this for every time the rewards menu came up (unless it was a 'sad win' situation). Or at least used some other sound, because the silence was deafening.

Most important issues: The jump button is smurfing pathetic and I can't skip the god damn "handing over an item" animation that every sidequest has. Why do I even need to choose which items I am giving to you in the first place?!

On a gameplay issue, the RPG elements to this are really, really light. To the point where action games like Far Cry and Assassin's Creed have a deeper skill tree and leveling system. Similarly, having a party or companions didn't really add very much if anything at all. We can't customise their gear, their attack patterns, skills, they're seemingly invincible and don't add a lot to combat other than taking aggro on an enemy or two.

I agree on the minigame/gameplay variety aspect. And on that matter, it would've been nice to have some varied optional content too besides marks/sidequests. Who doesn't love exploring an optional mystery dungeon?

Also yeah BoB I have no idea wtf you have been smoking with the victory theme. :p

I agree largely with the item criticism, although I suspect a lot of it comes into play in the New Game+ as it seems crafting is more important there. But yeah chests being generally worthless overall was pretty depressing.

As well as Pauw's handing over item point, I also did not enjoy the whole "oh hey guys we've forgotten to use the PS5 haptic feedback triggers, so let's make every door in the game be a manual two button press and hold input".

One big thing for me that could have been improved would have been at least a few more visitable cities. All the major cities we visited were basically battle dungeons, it would have been nice to have been able to see both sides instead of just "hey guys look everything here is Akashic have fun"

The smurfing S rank Dragon hunt: Why the smurf was this thing in the middle of the game? I still haven't worked that out yet. I know you're not techincally required to do it at the point it becomes available, but it was the highest level hunt in the game. Even the Behemoth King was less of an issue and, yes, of course, at that point our Clive had all the abilities and was way stronger so naturally it would be. But that makes it seem like an even weirder decision to drop that S rank when they did.

Lastly, I still think the enemies were way too tanky out of story mode. And again, it didn't add any challenge to the game, it didn't make battles any more difficult, just unnecessarily long. This is probably going to be the biggest thing that ever stops me from going for a new game+ on the Final Fantasy mode. I'd much rather the enemies had much smaller HP pools and greater damage output so that the difficulty came from mastering the largely fantastic combat mechanics and using them well.

Glad to see I'm not the only one dissatisfied with the ending. After the enslavement and cruel mistreatment of bearers was focused on so heavily throughout the majority of the storyline and lore, you'd think there would be some quests where Clive finds a way to liberate his fellow branded still in slavery and captivity, but it all takes a backseat to the bog-standard "kill God" JRPG cliche plot and otherwise ends with no payoff. Bearers throughout the land are still suffering and treated worse than animals but whatever, life goes on I guess. Maybe we might get some DLC down the line for this but I'm not holding my breath.

I also have to agree with Jill being blander than stale bread, she has her moments but they are too far and too few inbetween, and otherwise the majority of her character revolves around Clive and has barely any agency of her own, and I still don't understand why she had to stay behind at the hideaway while Clive, Josh and Dion went to the final boss.