Naoki Yoshida and Creative Business Unit 3 are like the King Midas: everything they touch turns into FFXIV. So even though XVI is the furthest Final Fantasy ever went away from the old formula, some remnants of JRPG genre keep holding it back. The fetch/hunt/speak-to-an-NPC sidequests were barely tolerable in a MMORPG, here they kill the pace completely. Gear/crafting/item system is a shadow of what it once was, coming down to "equip thing with big number". Optional dungeons do not exist and main story dungeons are linear corridors with a group of enemies or a chest with 20 goblin nutsacks placed in every second room. I struggle to think of any piece of side content that doesn't feel like a chore to do. Trials and hunts are marginally better, though the low variety of enemy types brings them down a bit as well.
So why not a lower rating? There two saving grace in FFXVI - combat system and music. That guest dev, who was put in charge of battle design pulled not only his own weight - he carried the entire game. Combat is fluid, flashy, simple enough to grasp, but deep enough to not get tired of it even after hundreds of battles. Every new battle is a pleasure, boss battles even more so.
But the best part would be the story bosses and Eikon battles. Whoever designed them must've loved Metal Gear Rising and Asura's Wrath, since the story bosses get more and more over-the-top with every step of the way. Add in to that ridiculousness the music by Soken and his team, and you have some of the best battles in the entire series.
XVI is an amalgam of a game, made from a bunch of pieces that don't quite fit. It's a good first try for CBU3.