izigame.me

Where do I even start with this game.
Final Fantasy 16 (FF 16) is one of the most polarising Final Fantasy games I have played, and I played all of them at this point besides 11. The highs of this game are some of the best in any game I have played. And the lows constantly make me wonder if I really want to play another minute of it. Lets get into this long review:
Positives
Cutscenes, big fights and music
This is the crowning achievement of this game. The game is practically a movie with the amount of cutscenes it offers. The quality of these cutscenes varies. Sometimes characters just talk with literally nothing happening. But other times the game decides to provide you with some of the best scenes ever put out in a video game. Any time an Eikon appears its always a joy to watch. But even the smaller more emotional scenes pack an impact when the game tries. All of this is backed up with some incredible orchestral music and voice acting, some of the best in any FF game, which is saying a lot since the music and acting is always good in these games. FF has always tried to push graphics and cinematography as far as possible. And this game is no exception. If there is any reason to play this game its probably those incredible scenes.
Polished action
The combat is insanely well animated and offers a wide variety of tools. Its fun seeing the crazy combos or dodging a really intense attack. Especially big boss fights end up having really cool attack patterns. I originally thought the Eikon battles would be purely cinematic, but they offer a really fun change of pace and are interesting in fight execution. That variety is sorely lacking at times.
Lore
The game puts an insane amount of effort into making each part of the world feel alive and filled with characters that could be relevant. All of it gets an insane amount of attention and if you ever feel lost you can press the pause button during cutscenes to get a write up on a subject or person.
DLC
Both DLCs do everything that I wish this game did earlier. The quests are more compact and offer more variety. Rewards actually feel rewarding. Areas look unique. And they both offer more of those incredible fights without having to deal with annoying roadblocks. The ability you get from rising tide is insanely fun and I wish the game was designed more around powers at that level. My only complaint is that these DLC are only available right before the end of the game, giving you less time to play around with the new things you get. If you are willing to play through FF 16 then these are a must buy with the game.
Performance
I genuinely don't even know if this is a positive or a negative to me. Overall the game runs fairly well and I had 0 issues for 98 % of the game. The main problem I had with the performance are that certain cutscenes just lag for 0 reason, and the game crashed multiple times throughout my play through. I believe the crashes are due to a memory leak because it always only happened after playing for a very long time. The game constantly auto saves so the crashes aren't the end of the world. But there was 1 moment it crashed and set me back about 1 hour due to a specific game mode I was playing. Overall the game looks gorgeous, runs well and has very little loading times, its honestly really impressive how well it performs even with the few issues mentioned. Especially as Square Enix goes, its probably one of the best ports coming from them.
Negatives
Difficulty
The game is way too easy. You start with 2 difficulties, easy and normal. The 3rd difficulty only unlocks after beating the game and restarting the game on new game +. There is no way im replaying an 80 hour game just to finally experience some semblance of difficulty. Normal enemies die in 1 ability. Big enemies can get perma staggered extremely easily. The only difficulty I ever faced was from doing optional fights that were 10 levels higher, and even then I would often 1st time clear them just from how simple it all feels. Its disappointing to see 0 superbosses, something that has been in the series since FF 1, pretty much just not be here at all.
Pacing, formulas and side quests
While I love the story. There are so many moments where you as a player are excited, and then out of nowhere the game will conjure up some completely minor roadblock that is going to end up costing you multiple hours of time to resolve. This happens so often that at some point it all becomes predictable. You start with a lecture about the enemy, go into a new area, do side quests and explore the new area, face a minor road block and more side quests, before finally getting to fight a big boss fight and repeating it all over. This game easily could have done without all of those roadblocks.
What doesn't help is that there is nothing to break up the pace. Side quests and hunts are the main way to do something other then combat and story. But all they offer is more combat and story, often at a more boring level then the main story. So many of the side quests end up being: Talk to 3 people or/and fight 1 or 2 basic enemies. All hunts are reskinned fights. I miss a gold saucer area like FF 7, a card game like FF 8, I can't believe im saying this but I miss something like fishing or photography from FF 15. There is pretty much nothing similar that allows a break from the main gameplay.
Rewards
The main game does not reward you very well. 99 % of rewards in the game are crafting materials you will never use. Ability points end up not mattering after about half the game. Gil is useless. And accessories usually give such minuscule and boring buffs like 10 % damage on a long cooldown skill, that it all just doesn't feel fun or rewarding. The most fun thing the game can give you are new abilities, but there were a lot of moments where those felt irrelevant because they didn't fit my playstyle or ended up just being worse then what I already had.
Customisation
There is practically 0 functional customisation besides your eikon abilities, and its honestly really disappointing. One of my favorite parts of any final fantasy game is customising gear, trying to figure out how to use a party member, facing interesting bosses that require creativity. None of that is here. Every fight is linear and beaten in the same exact way of dodging and using stagger breaking attacks and then spamming all your abilities when the enemys bar breaks. Party members can't get customised at all. Your own gear is customisable but it never really matters since there is always a very clear upgrade you can go for without having to pay any costs at all. Changing up eikon abilities is fun but I never really felt the need to think about what is optimal.
Conclusion
Its clear a lot of time and attention was given to this game. FF 16 is an ambitious game from every angle. Its beautiful cinematics, wonderful music, energetic combat, magical eikons and detailed lore are all incredibly praise worthy and some of those aspects are top of the line what you would expect from a real modern AAA game. Its a really good game and I overall enjoyed my time with it, but at times it feels like a 20 hour game stretched over 80 hours. I do sometimes wonder why the combat is this easy and the RPG elements have been reduced this much, this game is coming from the same Square enix that gave you Kingdom Hearts data battles, some of the best fights in any action game that also offer a good amount of RPG strategics, its disappointing this game has nothing even close to that.
Its a true FF game filled with innovation and the flaws that come with that innovation. It is a fully finished and polished FF game that offers something completely different from anything else in the series. Overall I recommend FF 16 but with the caveat that you should know what ur getting into.