I have so many mixed feelings about this so I'm just going to break it down into parts, to start I wanna preface with the fact I've played every final fantasy game to completion yes this includes the MMOs where I've done the overall majority of content in both, I only bring this up because I think being a long time fan made me enjoy this entry less instead of more and while I strongly disagree that this game "isn't final fantasy" it could be more final fantasy.

Visuals: What is there to say, the game is breathtaking most of the time, the only kind of drab thing is the art direction, 99% of the villages are ramshackle copypasted shacks but outside of that its a treat to look at, character design and models are nice.... except for most of the monsters whose mechanics and models are ripped straight from XIV, even the Moogle this is the first mainline FF in ages to not have a unique moogle design, its just copypasted from XIV, lots of NPCs share names with XIV npcs and it makes the game feel like it lacks identity.

Story: Both the strongest and weakest thing in this entry, the game starts incredibly strong, but suffers as it goes. Really grand, powerful plots are often interrupted by glorified fetch quests and the pacing of the sidequests is absolutely atrocious there are five hours of sidequests before the final boss, and while yes they are well written most of those sidequests should have been the main story. For example, there is a cutscene midway through the game that strongly hints something is up with Torgal, this is never brought up again in the main plot but is in two sidequests, Torgal is...your only real mainstay party member and all of his development is in a sidequest. Why is he special? Well thats kind of left up in the air too with just small lore tidbits instead of fleshing out a major character. Don't get me started on Jill I know XIV addicts and XVI fans will attack me for this but CBU3 has often struggled with female characters and Jill is no different, her development is stunted and all of her agency is at one point completely taken away and just given to Clive, she doesn't even get to participate in the final conflict or make any meaningful difference on the plot, and all of the other women are either hilariously cartoonishly evil (such as Annabella) or just kind of there to hand out sidequests (Mid). SOME of the sidequests have extremely powerful and good writing even occasionally making me tear up, other ones are boring slogs that have you running back and forth with little lore or reward to show for it. The main scenario has some high highs, some of the highest of modern final fantasy games but the lows are quite dreadful and almost embarassing. Yoshi-P only knows MMO pacing and it shows, but whereas XIV has years of character development to make even more drab parts palatable with lore this game just...has long stretches of nothing and characters I wanted to care for but got shafted by the end.

Gameplay: The actual strongest part of the package, fights feel epic and fun and learning the powers of the different Eikons was a real treat, my only real gameplay complaint are the sidequests that I've rambled about enough and the speed in which you explore the world, Clive takes ages to sprint, you cannot do this on command, and he won't do it at all in the barren, lifeless villages that plague this game making walking through towns tedious. Even the chocobo feels slow so there is something wrong there. That brings me to another problem with the gameplay: the exploration, as I said there are no cities to explore, villages are lifeless and drab with only a handful of charmless npcs each and there might as well be no cities, only showing up as back alley dungeons and in cutscenes. Yoshi-p's bizarre insistence on no minigames to keep the story "dark" (seriously one of his many interviews where he isn't being a weird racist he goes into this) had such a terrible impact on the world the entire world feels free of leisure, stiff and unalive, even the most serious games in the FF series had minigames, moments of leisure and places to explore and other things to do besides combat but here? That is all there is.
Speaking of upgrades are just vertical, the crafting is mostly useless and there is almost no gear variety or rpg mechanics to speak of.

Music: Some tracks, namely Titan's final phase, the final boss final phase, the prelude and the hunt boss music slap insanely hard. However, I feel like Soken was holding back, there aren't honestly that many memorable or experimental tracks and for an OST with over 200 songs you'll be hearing the same like 4 or 5 over and over and over in almost every cutscene and town. Soken has been known for his beautiful music and variety where did it go??

In summary I feel like this game has almost no identity of its own, while FF has always been self-referential (something I normally find quite charming) this game is just a testament to Yoshi-P's ego, as the player gets bombarded with and endless onslaught of XIV references, and a game whose frames drop on performance mode despite yoshida boasting that the game would not need patches. I'm left sincerely hoping CBU3 doesn't do another mainline game for quite some time as this is the third worst game in the series for me barely beating out XIV, and walking over the low, low bar that is II. It's a real shame I honestly truly wanted to love it, most games I love, hell most Final Fantasy games in general I find myself wishing they would never end even on endless replays, but towards the end I was just ready for this to be done, and left kinda mixed on an ending I didn't feel the game earned.

Been delaying this review for so long but later than never

first story think it's decent & good I feel like the highlights of the story and pivotal big moments are great however a common complaint but I feel like the game suffers from really poor plotting. the lead up to the moments doesn't feel as engaging as desired sadly and this complaint becomes more apparent after like 10hrs in the game and strongly increases during the 2nd timeskip. Also feel like I wish this story was like maybe 5hrs longer and some stuff I wanted more time to breathe or just go more in depth. Clive taking over the cid mantle so to say , the whole clive inner termoil while the moment itself was great in my opinion with how major it is I feels like it something I would've happened near the climax of the 2nd timeskip rather than the mid beginning part of it. I think the game has very sound and consistent theme's tho , hope , faith and fate were nailed. Conclusion of the story itself I'm contend with didn't expect something else and I feel like there didn't need to be some crazy subversion over ambitious ending it was simple to me and conclusive and with the type of tale this is I wanted an ending like that.

Music this is what I somewhat dreaded pre release Soken as a composer is someone I wasn't the most fond of until FFXIV shadowbringers where. However while I didn't expect much from him in XVI he still managed to dissapoint me in the sense of me knowing he could've just done much better. Find the flame and eikon ost and some other songs are great. however overall it's not that memorable to me which is tough to say the least. I don't think I will see myself looking fondly on this OST. Another complaint I have is the directing and usage of the music itself beside the fact of lack of unique tracks or character tied themes. Eikon fights being the same and not that many variations of the battle theme. I find some music choices in some scenes just off or straight up immersion breaking the titan 2nd phase fight for example it was cool reminded me of an alexander raid but it felt so out of place it soured the moment for me. Some other examples of it occuring that I can't think of atm but yea a bit tough. However when they use the music correctly ( most of the time tbh ) it's peak "Accept the truth or "I've always been proud to call you my shield." peak perfection 0 complaints on those.

Now onto the world/environments & exploration something that didn't surpise me AT ALL was how boring traversing and there was sense of reward for exploration at all my god. Never did a game feel like exploration such a thing they didn't want you to do. beautifiul looking environments but just being beautifiul end of the day. Traversing with the chocobo's felt more fun in XV even and nitpick but the jump button outside comment is fucking useless and the fact we can't toggle sprint is horseshit.

Now onto characters here I'm mostly postitive I love clive , JOSHUA is my goat , we got the best version of CID and Dion is the best LGBT rep to ever grace that community. There are some obvious dissapointments tho the elephant of the room Jill. While I think she's decent and not bad at all can't help but feel like she's sometimes really just there and super bland. With her being the shiva eikon user and the monsteriousities she commited. We didn't get that much of a deep look into it. I like how she foils and parallels with Clive but I can't help but feel it could've just been better. that's kinda the whole thing with the game allot of it is good to great. but it shouldn't be that it should've been great constantly it was the bare mininium for most. Another thing the party and cast dynamics as 1 on 1 are most really solid. but as a cast group really not that group of misfits & outcasts coming together to face their fate or destiny blah blah just that feeling is really appeal of the franchise and it's really missing. pre release the no party concerns were warranted completely. the fact you also almost never have a FULL party its always duo or trios and the max size from what I remember isn't over 4. which makes it impossible to get those dynamics even rolling. Also which makes character's individiual suffer more I feel Byron & Cid bring the best out of Clive's characterization so when they're not on screen "he loses his edge" and becomes a bit dull of a character and just not as entertaining. Since he doesn't really have em to bounce of from. His dynamic I think with Gav is great and same with Joshua but 1 gav is not that present in the story and Joshua I feel like doesn't need any elaboration. What makes the lack of party hurt even more thru like the 25% of the game shows really what we could've had. imagine a party with clive , cid , jill , byron , gav, joshua and Dion. so many unique dynamics and interactions that could've flourished of that what a shame.

Now onto gameplay ignoring the exploration aspect uh not gonna talk about the lack of rpg elements blah blah has been nailed too death already so no need for me to speak on it again. Combat was great and strongest part of the game for sure. from clive to eikon fights I have really no harsh complaints only desires of like maybe being able to switch with 4 eikons and being able to use the crosspad more for combat but beside that nothing really the variety is great and the eikon fights switch it up nicely the scale and epicness is unmatched in the boss fights of the game it screams GOTYYYYY and it really has 2 of the greatest boss battles of all time for me. Didn't really care for the diffculty since I also didn't expect it nor did I came for a challenge lol but just wished there was a bit more mob enemy variety and yea thats it.


Reading some reviews prior and setting my expectations right the game delivered in most of the areas I expected and I'm not as dissapointed as others. Joshua is one of my fav characters in the franchise , Find the flame one of my fav character themes and the titan boss fight rematch in my top 10 boss battles of all time. 2nd is my fav FF protagonist they made a naichicore ass protagonist when he did the oath on his sword I was geeking like crazy considering that's the most knight shit he has done whole game lol. but yea a good/great game that should've been phenomenal.

8/8,5 for me sorry for the typos & grammar mistakes just in case

I finished it but not on a good note. By the end of this game I was well and truly over it to the point that all I felt for it is hatred. They ruined what could have been a masterpiece of a game by just simply putting in too much content. The dungeons just went on...and on, I was so worn out by puzzles even half way through this game. I couldn't stand looking at them anymore after a certain point. Certain quests and objectives just did too many iterations of the same thing like following and attacking those poles through several areas or the first time you enter vermillion wasteland, the amount of times they make you run back and go to sleep was ridiculous, it wasn't necessary. They could have trimmed a lot of this game out, make it just as challenging while still being just as invested at the end than you were at the beginning where experiencing the mechanics for the first time were fun and exciting.

I loved many things within this game, the story was a big strength of this game too I found. Navigating the multi-level worlds, while difficult, was fun and rewarding. Even the soundtrack was great. However the overall experience was ruined by needless content for the sake of padding it out.