Disappointing.

Pros:
- Great music, Soken delivers as always.

- Some boss battles (when they are not reskins).

- Really some epic moments especially during cinematics before/during/after main story boss battles.

Mid:
- Combat is flashy and satisfying, which is a good point. But outside of boss battles, enemy variety is very lackluster, so combat ends up really repetitive. It's kinda MMO-esque: Trash mobs are boring, bosses are not (at least some of them, see previous point).

Cons:
- MMO-esque world (empty with groups of mobs here and there) and sidequests (mostly lame fetch quests). I wonder if YoshiP did not bring way too much "stuff" from FFXIV.
In all that filler (again, like in a MMO) a couple sidequests were better, but having to suffer 10-15 fetch quests to finally stumble upon a somewhat interesting (but still underdeveloped) one doesn't make it worthwhile.

- Predictable story. Many characters and nations but everything is underdeveloped. Too wide, not deep enough. Spread too thin.

- Underused support cast, not enough character development. For instance, I don't care when Clive and Jill finally kiss, she had like 10 lines in the whole game up to that point. Most of the game you travel with a companion but they say almost nothing. They have almost no lines during quests (even main quests) and almost no banter during travel. Travel in that big and empty open world could have been the opportunity for a lot of character development with banter, but nope, you just get a companion you barely notice during quests nor combat.

- Pacing is horrendous. Again, MMO-esque: Main quests with story progression and epic boss battles are punctuated by main fetch (!!!) quests where you do mundane tasks for some person that supports your cause. But you don't care about them, because they are underdeveloped.

- Running around in the main hub, and villages is boring. Again, feels like a MMO. Even the devs realised it because they give you the option to teleport to quest givers to start or turn in a quest. So instead of making the world interesting they give you fast travel++ to skip all of it!

- Character progression is bad. The skills you have access to open up way too late. And even then, you may not be able to get the "build" you want because of the ability points cost, unless you do a lot of boring sidequests. Yes respec is free, but this just shows how useless it is: If respec is free, why have it in the first place?
In the "Gear and Eikons" screen you can easily switch between like 6 build setups you have created, but it's useless until NG+, because you don't have enough ability points to have more than one build unlocked at the same time. Meaning if you want to switch between two saved setups, you still have to do some boring menuing unspeccing the abilities of setup 1 to instead spec in the abilities of setup 2.

- Itemization is a joke. Gear upgrades are just plain stat upgrades. No build choice to spec into some eikon or some combat style. Accessories are an attempt at speccing into a given eikon ability, but the change is boring and inconsequential (some cooldown reduction or a 10% damage increase, yay!).

- QTEs. Really? Is that still a thing? QTEs to open a door or pull a handle, lmao. And the QTEs during cinematics are a useless addition to give the illusion of interactivity (like all QTEs ever made).

Wasted potential. Such a shame. Feels rushed or like a lot of content has been cut and you end up with a barebone product.

Just unlocked the last eikon before the final couple quests, it was fun playing with it in a couple battles, but that's it. I don't feel compelled to finish the story, because at this point I have lost interest in what may or may not happen (and I expect to be disappointed). I won't bother with the DLCs either. I hope to find the motivation to return to the game in a couple weeks/months to finish it or hell, experience the DLCs and NG+.

It's a sorry state of Final Fantasy if you first have to (again) await a release on PC (since owning a PS5 is pointless), the fact that they have killed off the world travel settings that drove FF to it popularity, and basically have ignored the auto-combat capabilities so you don't have to mash your keyboard/mouse.

This will likely be the last FF game I will purchase, as you can't trust them to produce anything decent these days without pulling the cash grab for a questionable quality.

Worth the journey

I've never been more bored by such a flashy combat system. Every enemy is an inflated healthbar punching bag, and there is zero difficulty. I roll my eyes every time combat starts. It takes forever, it's incredibly easy and it's soooo boring.

Also there's basically zero RPG in this RPG. It's a walking simulator with stiff cut scenes, wooden characters, and again just awful combat.

Please save yourself the disappointment.

Hard not to recommend the game when the writing is so good. Might be some of the strongest character/dialogue writing I've seen from this company in years. You can really tell the 14 team was in the helm on writing this one.

I would not recommend this game if you were looking for some kind of meaningful deep game play because you won't find it here. This is for all intents and purposes a visual novel lets be honest. The combat is actually the least fun thing about the game and if the story and characters weren't written so well this would be a 4/10 game at best. I feel they hurt themselves marketing this game because they advertised it as a hack n slash game when the reality is the combat is extremely shallow and unfun and doesn't provide you the skill expression you would expect from a hack and slash. That being said FF15's combat was also extremely shallow and its hard to say which one I hate more. It's almost like they tried their best to do the complete opposite of FF15 because of the negative reception that game had (more linear better story telling).


FF16 is a terrible action RPG but an amazing visual novel based in the final fantasy universe.

I think I'm playing this at the right moment where I'm so disappointed and mind rotted from the terrible western writing in video games lately that ♥♥♥♥ scratched an itch I didn't know I had for some compelling characters and storylines.

Last thing I'll say is the game runs like completely garbage. I think the game looks quite dated and bad as well with 720p FMVs that make no sense to even be in the game because 90% of the cutscenes are rendered in game and look better. This PC port is pretty horrendous so hopefully they patch and fix it up soon. Not really many bugs if any but performance is abysmal. If you're not on a 4070+ minimum don't even bother trying to play. Frame latency is all over the place as well which makes combat feel even worse.

My rating is weird as a total package it's a 7/10 at best but if you look at it as a visual novel then its a 9/10. making this a PS5 exclusive hurt them IMO and Square enix in the future please do a PC focused release so you can reach a wider audience and really push the boundaries on fidelity.

I will let you know when it is playable.

It is not a bad game, but it does not hit the 'spot'.
The Good:
-It looks very pretty
-The OST is amazing
-The combat is pretty neat (Thanks to Platinum)

The Bad (For me personal):
-The story is typical FF, kinda childish/cringe? (for my tastes)
-The characters are VERY cringe, very predictable with childish. (Not trying to be a d*ck here)
-The Gameplay loop although fun, is getting 'old' after a certain time and it does get pretty boring.

All in all not a bad game, especially for JActionRPG (keep in mind it is not a traditional FF), but not for me. In my opinion FF XV was somewhat better and did not overstay it's welcome, this does.

Eh.. it was ok.

I really wanted to love this game - the graphics and music are amazing, and there are some truly epic moments during Eikon battles (which are just long cutscenes with quicktime events). Gameplay was uninteresting since you only control 1 character and there are no skill trees, RPG mechanics, or strategy to think about, not even elemental weakness or weapon types. Exploration is pointless and combat gets very repetitive. Story/ plot was mostly predictable and boring. It deals with some darker themes around death & slavery, but when a village gets destroyed before you have a chance to develop an attachment to it, there's little emotional impact. Similarly, lots of "f*ck" in the dialogue serves no point/ misses the mark. I kept waiting for a major twist to shake things up, but then the game just ended. Unsatisfying.

Overall I'd give this a 4/10 as a Final Fantasy game. If you don't like Final Fantasy or RPGs and wanted an action game, maybe up to 7/10.

as far as final fantasy games go, this isn't one. rpg mechanics are non existent, side quests are irrelevant, open world exploration is actively discouraged by the fact that there are no secrets or dungeons to find, no interesting loot, and any loot you do get usually boils down to a few gil.

the combat is middling as far as action games go and it's basically a game of dump your eikon cooldowns, dodge until the stance bar breaks and then repeat with no real nuance to speak of. performing combos does not reward you in any meaningful way, and while cool and flashy your attacks feel like slapping a sponge with a wet frankfurter. despite this the combat is not difficult by any means and dying is not a threat, nor does it have any consequence.

i want to love this game, the eikons are cool, the story is fun, but the gameplay was such a slog, especially 30 hours in i couldn't bring myself to finish it.

5/10