I've seen a lot of positive praise and sentiment for XVI even from longtime fans and I find that worrying. I finished the game and thought it was a solid 5/10 at best and was happy for it to be over. The game felt closer to Genshin Impact than it did Final Fantasy.
The music was generally quite good and the eikon battles were a fun and new take, but just about everything else I found lacking.
spoiler
- The main story retreads themes that have been told many times and offers nothing unique. It's clear early on we are on a quest to collect the rings of power to fight the big bad who thinks the only solution to the problem is starting over.
- Most characters were flat and uninteresting
- Combat was very simple and unengaging. It was simply not fun. You can only use about a quarter of the abilities you collect (not that theres many more youd find useful enough to use anyways)
- Crafting/itemization was pointless
- MMO-tier side quests (ironic considering XIV has some interesting ones)
- Story format is lifted straight from XIV as all "engagement" quests (ones with the red crossed swords on the map) are the same as XIV dungeons (trash, minor boss, trash, minor boss, trash, major boss)
- Empty world with no incentive for exploration
- Minimal play style variety despite the different eikon flavors
- No class system (I would have expected something listed as a "role playing game" to have some sort of class system)
- No party system in any form
Overally, fairly worried about the franchise since so many people are over the moon as it implies we might be getting more of the above. It feels like XVI took heavy inspiration from XIV but did a worse job at the highlights of XIV (story, job/battle system) and straight up copied some of the bad parts of XIV.
Now that it's been a few weeks, hopefully more people have finished the game. What are your thoughts?
Really fell flat for me, riddled with bad animation, fetch quests, boring dialogue, pointless crafting etc.
I really did enjoy the first hour or so, but tbh even the combat - which people praise - wasn't even as good as stranger of paradise in depth or complexity. You spent most of your time doing the same combo waiting for cool downs.
Hitting attack or dodge repeatedly isn't satisfying depth, not to mention the dodge just automatically saves you as long as its timed right the direction means nothing.
Side quests were pretty unbearable, in my whole life I've never skipped cutscenes, I skipped them all on the last 12 side quests because the voice/animation were so boring and I knew I'd be rewarded with either gil of crafting materials, both of which I had in abundance and nothing to spend it on.
If you want to lock a "super hard" mode behind ng , then fine, but the "Action focused" mode was so easy that it's insulting to lock the harder mode out, nobody wants to play a game twice to enjoy it and especially not one that's 50 hours long.
Overall, very disappointed, after seeing people rave about yoshi I thought it could be good but it was just too close to an MMO in quest design.
Edit: Oh and having no elemental or status effects in a game in which every eikon has a theme and you fight marlboros which do bad breath is just so lazy. The system was oversimplified, not complex, everything the enemy did was just a pure subtraction, nothing else. I just can't understand how they've released such a plain experience.