I had an overall positive experience with FF16, but I also can't help but be disappointed that I didn't love this game as much as I thought I would. Despite having a lot of interesting ideas, I feel like the game never came together in a satisfying way. I've got a lot of thoughts about this game, so here comes my stream of consciousness rambles.

Positives first: FF16 has phenomenal presentation values. Everything looks beautiful, I thought the entire cast gave really strong vocal performances (with Clive's VA being the standout), and I never ran into any of the performance issues other people have been talking about. I really enjoyed the OST as well, but wouldn't have minded a bit more diversity in the boss themes. I also really enjoyed the combat system: once you unlock multiple Eikons, I had a lot of fun mixing and matching different abilities together. The itemization leaves a lot to be desired, but I'm not too upset about the lack of RPG elements, to be honest. The gameplay loop worked for me. I think the big spectacle fights against the other Dominants and more challenging hunts generally did a good job of bringing the best out of the combat system; while a few of the bosses (Titan) went on a bit too long and had a few too many phases and HP, the game absolutely peaks during these moments. A few of my personal standouts include the Typhon, Bahamut, final Barnabas, and final Ultima fights, and if the game was always even nearly as good as these peaks, it'd be the easiest 5/5 of my life.

But the storytelling and character writing ultimately let the game down. This is especially disappointing because there's a lot of genuine promise here: the game opens incredibly strong, I was really into the story through the entire first act (more or less up to the 5 year timeskip), and there's a lot to like about many of the characters. However, the deeper I got into the story, the more the cracks started to show. After the timeskip, the game falls into a loop of run errands around the hideaway -> travel to a new village and help the town ally with busywork -> do a story mission and Eikon fight -> repeat... and only the third part of that loop is actually fun. These pacing issues also bleed over into the side quests; while I enjoyed these more than most people seemed to (the moment-to-moment gameplay for the side quests wasn't the most exciting thing, but I enjoyed the little character moments and worldbuilding they gave us), the game has an awful habit of slowing to a crawl by forcing you to complete side quests to progress (if I have to collect another ship part for Mid, I will lose my mind) or dumping a bunch of side quests onto the map right as the tension should be increasing (lost my mind when they gave us literally a dozen new quests right before the final battle). There's a really great 20-30 hour game in here if you just chain together the story missions with minimal connective gameplay in between, but as it is, the story is just filled with busywork and fetch quests.

I was also disappointed by most of the character writing. I found Clive to be pretty likable and I liked a lot of the ideas his arc revolved around, but he's not given anything interesting to do as a character after coming to terms with his role in Joshua's "death" (i.e. the 25% mark of the story). The game tries to shoehorn in some moments where characters beg Clive to stop being so self-sacrificial near the end, but none of this is really developed or explored, so it didn't do much for me. Clive could've worked (though I honestly think the story works better with Cid - or someone like him with a closer connection with many of the antagonists - as the protagonist), but the script needed to give him more to do. Maybe he could've been challenged more on his choice to destroy the Mothercrystals? Maybe we could've explored his transformation from first act Clive to Cid rather than pushing all that development into a timeskip? Enough has been written about how terribly this game treats Jill, so I don't have much to add, but it's atrocious that the character with the second most screentime is given as little to do as she is. Genuinely cannot think of a secondary protagonist done as dirty by the writers as she is. Like surely she has more value to the plot than just pining for Clive and silently standing around in the background of every scene? I liked Joshua well enough, but, while he's given more lines and presence, I think he suffers from the same issue as Jill: the script doesn't give him anything overly meaningful to do. We spend most of the first two acts building intrigue around his mission and research into Ultima, but none of it really amounts to anything: all the big Ultima reveals get dropped by Ultima himself during the Stonhyrr mission. The ending clearly wants us to feel something for Joshua, but it fell flat to me because he hadn't really done anything since the opening hours.

I liked a lot of the secondary allies more: Dion is by and away the best character in the story and deserved more screentime, Cid adds some much-needed charisma to the main cast before he dies, and a lot of the hideaway's residents (Gav, Mid, Byron, etc.) are likable and fun. The villains are a different story: everyone is either killed before they can really develop into anything interesting (Benedikta, Hugo, Anabella) or end up being complete nothing characters (Barnabas, Ultima). So many plot threads surrounding the villains are set up but ultimately go nowhere: the Sanbreque plot with Anabella is the worst example of this (despite being set up as a central antagonist and the reason for most of Clive's suffering, she doesn't really do much of note and leaves no impact on the overall plot), but it also hurts the Waloed plot (Barnabas' introduction near the start of the game sets him up as a Dominant supremacist, which could be interesting and help round out the game's otherwise surface level exploration of slavery and oppression, and I was really disappointed when all that promise was dropped to make him Ultima's puppet). While I suppose the central Ultima conflict fits with the story's emphasis on fighting for freedom from oppressive systems, I found him to be a fairly generic JRPG villain (something something "free will is bad" something something "obey me because I created you") and couldn't really get invested in him. I know that killing god is a Final Fantasy trope, but surely he could've been a bit more inspired.

FF16's trying to say a lot and commentate on a lot of big issues - magic and the Blight are clearly a metaphor for climate change and our over-reliance on fossil fuels, a lot of time is spent exploring the Bearers' plight and the horrific outcomes of societal prejudice, there's a surprisingly radical throughline discussing the necessity of violence against oppression, etc. - but, ultimately, doesn't say anything interesting or new (and, in the case of slavery, ends up contradicting itself by attempting to paint Rosaria - a nation which upholds the enslavement of Bearers - as superior because the royal family was "nicer" to those they enslaved and giving Clive - a man who spends nearly half his life enslaved, and should be intimately familiar with the atrocities that come with that experience - a strange mini-arc where he is seemingly surprised to learn about the horrors of slavery). There's so, so much interesting and important content to explore with the thematic concepts FF16 wanted to introduce, and I don't think this story did its ideas justice. While I'm not expecting a dissertation, I really think the story would've benefited from discussing some of the more subtle outcomes of oppression against minority groups or drawing more attention to the really bad consequences of Clive destroying the Mothercrystals.

Close all this off with an ending that, while compelling and spectacular in a vacuum, felt wholly undeserved after the previous 50 hours. FF16 wants to have a cathartic, satisfying climax but, once I looked past the hype as hell final boss fight and music, it all just felt empty, flimsy, and undeserved; the heart that was needed to make the ending truly work just wasn't there. I think this is also an effective microcosm of the story as a whole; I won't pretend there aren't great moments or that I didn't frequently get swept up by the flashing colors, swelling score, and spectacular bosses, but the game just feels a bit hollow. I really, really wanted to fall in love with this story, but ultimately couldn't look past the severe structural issues, disrespectful character writing, and general lack of heart.

I had a few other issues that didn't really fit above: despite the world looking absolutely beautiful, the exploration is super lame (there's absolutely no point to looking around at the world because all you'll find are common crafting materials that you already have 2000 of or weapons that are worse than what you're already carrying) and I wish the enemy variety had been better. Running around the world made me wish I was playing Xenoblade again.

But with all that said, I still put 70 hours into this game, will probably get around to doing a Final Fantasy mode playthrough at some point, and definitely felt something when the game ended and the credits rolled, so I certainly wouldn't say I had a bad time. Reading back over all this, I realize my review seems pretty negative, and I went back and forth between 3 and 3.5 stars for quite some time, but there's a lot of promise and a lot of good. FF16 was just so close to being something great, and I'm just let down that the writers weren't able to pull everything together in an interesting, satisfying way.