I’m not a FF loyalist, in fact I notoriously have a hard time finishing super-long JRPG’s because I get so invested in the plots that I will frequently barrel-ass my way through a game to experience the narrative, only to hit a wall where I’m under leveled and unable to proceed without starting over and re-grinding. Call that a skill issue, I’ve accepted it. Going into FF16, I assumed the switch from turn-based combat to all out action would be welcoming to me. Holy shit was I wrong.

In a year where HI-FI RUSH reinvigorated the 3D action genre with unique combat gameplay, dolled out at an exciting pace that allowed you to adapt and master it in equal time with the narrative, FF16 holds its combat mechanics hostage, giving you barebone options that take nothing to pull off and feel ineffective against the damage sponge enemies. Even as you unlock new abilities, there’s nothing about them that differentiates combat encounters. No elemental weaknesses across enemy types, no specific strategies for approaching certain mini or main bosses. They all take damage, stagger, and react to parry’s in the same universal manner. There’s no encouragement to experiment because every baddie can be killed the same way: Whack away until they’re dead. And that’s all aside from the fact that you don’t get a 2nd element, wind, or its accompanying upgrades until nearly 6 hours later. 6 HOURS between opportunities to freshen up combat.

I don’t want to undersell that pacing note, because it is brutal. Even if you wanted to try and increase the progression speed, the quest structure of this game is unbearable. Follow markers across linear, empty stretches of overly-detailed-yet-non-interactive maps to talk to an NPC, then repeat the process to go talk to another one. Fight mobs along the way, then repeat. Sucks that you can’t manually sprint between these distances (you have to rely on an auto-run which SOMETIMES works), instead you get to watch Clive trudge along at a half-jog. When you’re not following markers to conversations, you're watching cutscenes that don’t need to be as long as they are. I LOVE CUTSCENES! I make YouTube videos about how great they are! But FF16 has a lot of inconsequential, time-wasting cutscenes. Sometimes you watch a cinematic, walk 20 feet down a narrow route, and then another one starts. My worst offender was a fake-out of a character's death on an underground bridge, for no reason. It’s so much padding, to an end I can’t understand. The narrative is so long and drawn out in its presentation that, again, the fact that you don’t get combat upgrades until you hit story milestones feels rude.

On the obstructive narrative: FF16 wants to be GAME OF THRONES at its best, but instead, it somehow makes GoT Season 8 look competent. You know what’s great about season 1 of that show? The fact that they were able to use the Stark kids to explain complicated world building elements to the audience. It’s a brilliant storytelling tool: Use the uneducated child characters to teach the uneducated audience. FF16 opens with members of 3 different unidentified governments negotiating how to fight the armies of a 4th unidentified government. We then go BACK in time to meet a 5th government with its own set of rituals and family members, all of them talking about impending war, and bloodline betrayal, and destined spiritual awakenings, and none of it has any clear context. These are characters talking about things THEY know, setting up conflict that WE’RE supposed to care enough about that we’ll resolve it through gameplay. Only the conflict reads like you’ve walked in on your nephew watching season 14 of an undubbed, unsubbed anime.

There’s a lot of broad emotional ticks throughout the plot that ring like SOMETHING is happening (Forbidden lovers, doomed men on a mission, children vying for their parents approval), but none of it is clear on a STORY level. Characters talk about things like curses and treaties, and we’re shown cutscenes of battles between nations we haven’t met yet. Context doesn’t start to emerge until a point where you can speak to a Historian in the central hub, who will give you access to reading materials on game lore (but only lore that is concurrent with the time at which you ask to see it). Who wants to stop their fast paced action combat to read wiki entries that explain a plot because the game won’t? WHO?! Show yourself!

Once the game does start to come into focus, dozens of hours later, its world emerges as so shoddily constructed that it confused me all over again. FF16’s commentary on the serious subject of slavery is paper-thin, and the logic behind how the slavery works within the socioeconomic structure of Valesthia makes very little sense. The fact that this world only exists at a level of pre-industrialized medieval fantasy despite the fact that its ruling class are subjugating magic users, The Bearers, in place of technology shows a lack of imagination. Conversely, the fact that the enslaved Bearers can wield magic (and in some cases, become gods) but don’t fight back because they seemingly never thought about it/they don’t want to rock the boat, reveals a complete lack of interest in saying something meaningful about the systems in which slavery exists. It’s just a mess

The game has 2 play options: “Action Focused” and “Story Focused.” I started this on what sounded like “Normal Mode” (Action), and held true for about 10 hours. Eventually I got tired of how simplistic the combat was, and figured the only way I was going to unlock more combat options was to speed up the plot. So I switched to story mode, threw on every auto-fighting mechanic the game had to offer, and found that the enemies STILL took forever to kill and the story STILL refused to shape itself into something cohesive. Time jumps! Major character arcs happening off screen! The best character in the game dies!

And then I just tapped out. Life is too short.

I usually can’t beat JRPG’s because I’m so eager to enjoy the story that I slack on the gameplay progression. Here, the gameplay and story slack so hard in their delivery that I was eager to stop. Shame.

(SPOILER: For real, how did the empire of Sanbreque not instantly fall into the hands of its magic using Bearers once its Mothercrystal was destroyed? Without the ability to use magic by proxy of crystal shards, how is that nation even still standing? The game doesn’t confront this possibility, it just skips ahead 5 years so we’ll forget about the fallout of such an action).