This isn’t any sort of formal review of the game (even though it reads like a review of sorts), but more of a bullet-point breakdown of what made Final Fantasy XVI work so damn well, and how badly it failed in other respects. There are no true spoilers here, so there’s no fear of learning something that you really wanted to abstain any knowledge of.

What worked:

• Storyline

I was fully immersed in XVI‘s storyline. Every single proper storyline development had me hooked. A number of people have been turned off by what they perceive as these story segments being “too long-winded”. I can agree that many storyline portions do take a good bit of time to unfold, often shifting to a whole other location to continue its progression, but it’s predominantly all fascinating exposition. It’s one of XVI‘s stronger aspects. The journey from start to finish, regardless of some of the frustrations experienced, sealed this game as my favorite storyline from the entire franchise. There are other aspects to it that can be summed up as “disappointing and frustrating” when it comes to delivering exposition, which we’ll go over soon.

• Soundtrack

Flat out a top five soundtrack that I’ve ever heard in a video game. There’s so much power to each track that, while not on the level of Final Fantasy VI, still wirlds emotion and importance to each song. Hearing the Final Fantasy theme playing during one particular moment in the game, accentuated everything unfolding, especially with how the song was performed. Everything fits like a glove, from the ambience of the music found in a town, to the grandeur and hype that Eikon battle tunes provide. Speaking of which…

• Eikon battles

Aside from the story its self, these massive behemoths battling it out with often multi-layered segments to the battle, provides some of the most memorable experiences I’ve ever had with any game. The scope of each Eikon encounter gradually expands as the fight proceeds, until it reaches such a mind-blowing and hyped crescendo, that no major boss battles outside of MMORPG’s comes close to them. It’s an absolute treat, and a fulfilling event whenever I got a chance to partake in these colossal clashes. While I craved much more than what was provided, I can understand that overloading the number of Eikon battles could lead to saturation, making them feel less epic, less special, and when it comes to the story, less meaningful.

• Combat in general

I had some reservations early on with the combat shown in previews. These over-the-top mechanics didn’t seem like it would be a proper fit in a more methodical pacing that previous titles featured. Even when I first started my playthrough, it felt off, and somewhat ill-fitting. After understanding some of the nuances, I became a lot more comfortable with it, and while it really doesn’t come off as something I expected to see in a Final Fantasy release, it’s a wrinkle in a fabric that many may consider “worn out” for a while now. Battles on the whole are exciting early on, and for the first two acts I was seeking out any fight I could find. Not everything comes up smelling roses with the gameplay though.

• Clive

The last time I really dug a lead in the franchise was Zidane from IX. During the early parts of the game I was afraid he was going to be like another stock emo lead protagonist. Thankfully Clive has layers to him, and actually becomes on of my favorite characters of any kind in the franchise. He comes off as genuinely likeable even through all he struggles with and battles against – something the franchise has struggled with in terms of lead protagonists. It’s going to be near impossible to one up Clive in Final Fantasy XVII or any future releases.

• Having that Final Fantasy feel while it refuses to conform to many series staples

The combat was just one aspect that made me feel like this felt more like an side title like Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, but then became comfortable enough to accept it as a new direction. I wasn’t enamored with a number of aspects that will be explained below. What really clicked with me in terms of XVI feeling like a proper installment of this legendary franchise, was the storyline, how it plays out, the protagonists and antagonists feeling like they truly belonged to a main line Final Fantasy release, and a game world that just screams Final Fantasy to me (issues and all). The icing on the cake was the medieval-type setting, which hearkens back to the glory days of the franchise, where it was more wizards and warriors and less guns and grenades.

• Torgal

Torgal best doggo.

• The final 2.5 – 3 hours

Just experiencing those final hours was more than worth the time and effort of making my way to it, blemishes and all. Like I said, there’s no spoiler content here, so I will not elaborate any further. Let’s just say that it was enough to (mostly) outshine the many transgressions I experienced throughout my time with XVI and not sour my time playing overall.

• Quality mode

Playing in quality mode provided a smooth, stable experience. There are plenty of small details peppered all around the world, with some excellent lighting on top of it all. And thanks to the patch that gave players the option to tone down the nauseating motion blur, it made for a striking game world to inhabit. Now if only that sense of stabilization and wonder extended to another mode…

What failed:

• Inconsistent frame rate outside battles in “Performance” Mode

I was under the impression that Final Fantasy XVI was going to have a performance mode consisting of as close to seamless as possible full 60fps in and out of battle. In battle, it was extremely rare that I encountered any kind of minor dips below 60fps. Once the battle ends, the frame rate becomes noticeably altered. Just the act of ending a battle and transitioning the more or less unlocked 60fps was incredibly jarring. Entering towns and seeing the frame rate dip to the 40’s at some infrequent moments, just took me out of the experience more often than not. In the end I did choose to suffer through the unpredictability of the unlocked frame rates outside of battle, just to take in the awe of the more or less 100% locked 60fps Eikon battles and general combat. The frame rate still sticks out like a sore thumb when traveling, but it’s easily two thumbs up for the combat.

• The asinine padding

Maybe because I was so invested into the storyline that I never noticed this til I reached the third act – the amount of meaningless padding was pretty gross. Let’s break this down into two pieces:

1. The side quest padding. While I initially was trying to do every single one I encountered, eventually started showing me that there was nothing of merit, nothing of meaning to them. It’s either give something to someone 100 feet away and then come back and repeat that a couple more times, or it’s an over-glorified fetch quest. Leave town, visit one of the areas, run or chocobo your way to the waypoint, collect something from the ground and/or deal with a small handful of enemies, return, complete. I know I may have missed some gear along the way as quest rewards, but it wouldn’t have been any meaningful upgrade anyway. While the hunts were a neat addition, since those fights are actually a lot of fun and make you think, all the other side quests are meaningless padding. True, they are optional and I didn’t need to partake in them, but a lot of enjoyment from playing RPG’s derives from making pit stops from the trip through the story to engage in a myriad of activities. The side quests in XVI predominantly tedious, monotonous and uninspiring.
2. The main story padding. This is the more egregious one. When you start a new chapter throughout the majority of the game, you initially have to complete a series of draining, drab and boring as all hell tasks. For example – you need to walk over here to get something to help someone with her project, bring it back, repeat a few more times. These are occurrences that should have been exclusively cutscene fodder; unplayable pieces of exposition being delivered. My “favorites” involved talking to one person, literally walk 20 yards to the next, then transition to walking 50 yards this time for another, returning back to the first person, who sends you 10 yards to the next part, who sends you 100 yards to the next, ad nauseam. This is absolute worst kind of padding, especially 95% of it was not prudent. You could have mashed that into the cutscene that preceded this all, and it would have feel more natural and flowed more smoothly, with more meaning. There’s nothing valuable about wasting 30+ minutes running back and forth to meaningless segments of the story.

• Jill

I felt absolutely no connection with Jill. There wasn’t enough of a reason to care about anything when it comes to her background and what is unfolding in present day, and she felt completely tertiary at best, to anything unfolding. She felt more like a vessel to have an aspect be given some relevance to the story and experience. My favorite of the supporting cast was easily Cid. This may actually be my favorite version of the long-running Final Fantasy Cid’s. This guy had depth to him, and each time he was on screen, he stole the show for me. When you take into consideration the game as a whole, and how I view Cid so highly and Jill so meaninglessly, that says something.

• Bereft of difficulty

This might be the easiest game with the Final Fantasy name attached to it, that I’ve ever played. Mystic Quest made me hit the wall more than XVI did. I died three times in total – of those three, two were in boss and/or Eikon battles because I fat fingered the wrong button accidentally during a more or less trivial moment, and the last was the final Eikon fight because somehow my Last Elixir was used around the same time I had healed myself and it didn’t really make it obvious that it happened, which made one attack kill me. Mashing attack doesn’t get you far at all (and it shouldn’t), but once you figure out how to easily dispatch normal enemies, how to dispatch shielded enemies, and how to take out the bosses, the difficulty becomes a joke with no punchline. Outside of that, maybe once I felt like there was some semblance of “challenge”? I know you’re given a “New Game +” upon completing the game. Increasing enemy strength on the first time around would have really been a game-changer. It’s extremely rare when I replay a game immediately upon completion (last time I did was Mass Effect 3 I believe), and the fact that we’re entering a period of time where Baldur’s Gate 3, Sea of Stars, Starfield, Spider-Man 2, Super Mario RPG Remake, Star Ocean 2 Remake and other long-term commitment titles are funneling out, I just don’t have the time to clear XVI once more.

• Combat in some aspects

Wait a minute – didn’t I praise the combat earlier? While yes, I did jive with the combat after some time, and playing out battles is indeed a good time, there’s almost no reason or no incentive to try and be flashy. Again, once you’re familiar with the nuances of each type of fight, it just becomes a matter of hitting certain attacks at certain times, without grace. I also didn’t enjoy the lack of “real” magic. I know some of the Eikon moves you learn are supposed to be the “magic” of this installment, but there’s nothing that outright hearkens back to the classics, like watching Quasar or Ultima play out in Final Fantasy VI. The over-the-top grandiose moves in combat all bright flash, with very little substance.

• The game world feels too “segmented”

Kind of like Final Fantasy XIII (aka probably the worst installment IMO), the segmented feeling of the game world, just feels disjointed. Granted there are enough areas with real estate to traverse through, none of it feels “alive” outside towns. There aren’t as many clusters of enemies between point A and B, and the traveling in general holds little meaning. It’s made less meaningful once you are able to ride a chocobo through areas, easily avoiding battles that would have slowed you down if you encroached too close to enemies. Towards the final march to the end game, it feels like a trek through a never-ending, and uninteresting corridor to get from point A to point B. There’s also bits of the map that without the Blight that could have easily held some kind of importance to visit, but it was left untouched.

• Leveling up and stats

For the most part, with the stats you gain leveling up – it’s all fruitless. Outside of most hunt bounties, it seems like enemies scale along with you while advancing through the story. That two point boost to stagger on a level up becomes a wash, as it really doesn’t add to anything since the enemies you encounter along the journey through the main storyline stay on course with your progression. Having something like a piece of jewelry with +20 to defense? That actually matters more.

• The lack of familiar Final Fantasy staples

Again, I just sang the praises of how Square Enix managed to make such an unconventional game “fit” into how a Final Fantasy game plays out, there’s a number of aspects that are sorely missed. The aforementioned lack of a conventional magic systems, at times, makes this feel like a third person hack and slash with flashy attacks (which for 2/3 of the journey, was pleasant enough). With a plethora of potions that could have been used from previous titles, there’s only a small handful, and an even smaller handful you can carry (although most of the game is so easy that foregoing higher potion counts doesn’t matter). Gearing up doesn’t feel special; finding a Dragoon Lance or the Atma Weapon, and equipping it to a character in older titles felt special, and provide a bit of a deviance from the same ol’ same ol’ – in XVI, you get what, less than a dozen weapons in the first go-around to upgrade (that’s just foregoing side missions and such), all being swords, all with no meaning or sense of grandeur. The same goes for the gear slots. The necklaces should add variety, being that they have some kind of special property, but there’s zero incentive to replace jewelry that has Torgal attack on his own after you perform certain attacks, or the one that boosts defense. Lessening a special attack by 4 seconds that takes nearly ninety seconds to refresh equates to next to no meaningful advantage.

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With that all said, even though I can draw upon more negatives than positives, what’s good about Final Fantasy XVI, is just magnificent. The pomp and circumstance of the storyline is almost second to none. The soundtrack being one the greatest I’ve ever come across in a video game. The gameplay daring to be different and yet feeling like a proper Final Fantasy adventure, flaws and all. And those Eikon battles – oh those grandiose encounters. The journey I took from the beginning to the very end, was really one of the best I’ve traveled with this interactive form of entertainment. Even with the shortcomings, Final Fantasy XVI manages to be one of the best installments in this long running franchise.

I do wish the asinine padding were pulled out and stuffed into the nice comfy pillow that is the story cutscenes. I do wish side quests weren’t copy and paste fetch quests with little to no meaning. I do wish the game had actually difficult, and that stats mattered, with gear that varied, and more traditional franchise aspects were showcased. These are some egregious transgressions that would normally bring a game to its knees, and yet what works, has XVI boldly stands tall above many other games within the genre.

Should you give Final Fantasy XVI a go? If you enjoy a story that hooks you in hard and leaves you invested throughout, a soundtrack for the ages, epic battles in the form of Eikon fights, and are open to experiencing a new way of this storied franchise playing out, it’s an absolute must play. You just need to come into this with the knowledge of many series staples being pulled out, the lax difficulty, and tons of pointless padding. It doesn’t usurp Final Fantasy VI or IX in terms of being the total package, but it’s worlds apart from being banal and just plain atrocious like Final Fantasy XIII, or have such an obtuse, unfriendly gameplay system like Final Fantasy II.

Square Enix now have a foundation to work upon, to build something even more meaningful and memorable. Would I be open to a Final Fantasy XVII that upholds many of the new traditions and mechanics that XVI introduced, but with refinement and better inclusion of old ideas? Hell yeah! My only wish is that it doesn’t take nearly a decade for another series installment.

According to Deus Ex: Human Revolution, we have four years to release Final Fantasy XVII-XXVI before XXVII is to release, and we wouldn’t want to alter the future like that!