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
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.