I finished FFXVI yesterday and I have an urge to share some thoughts. I guess this is a review of sorts.

Visuals

Yes, the graphics are very high quality, but this game is a prime example of the fact that strong art direction has been more relevant since PS2. Most of the game is medieval towns and meadows. Don’t get me wrong, they are beautiful, well implemented medieval towns and meadows, but just so utterly uninteresting.

But credit where credit is due, the fallen ruins are magnificent. Ancient ruins is such a well-trod trope that it’s impressive they managed to make them feel fresh, while still fully evoking a feeling of ancientness. If only they could have an equally distinct approach to the idea of a medieval town.

The eikon fights were spectacular, but I eventually got bored with them, as all the spectacle was very samey after a while.

Story

I liked it. The worldbuilding and the character writing were excellent, and the political scheming worked much better than in eg. FFXII. It lost a bit of steam after all the human antagonists were gone, as Ultima just wasn’t very interesting, but the well-establish characters carried it to the end.

Also the writing side of side quests was good. They fleshed out the world and the characters, almost nothing felt like a meaningless errand. I ended up doing all the side quests, not because of an explicit decision, but because they felt narratively worth doing.

Mechanics

This is where the core of my gripes comes in. The game felt so disappointingly flat on a mechanical level.

First of all, almost nothing in this game makes a meaningful difference Examples:

• You go to pick up an item on the map. It’s 15 gil. 15. At a time when weapons cost thousands. Almost every item pick-up was a disappointment, there is hardly any reward for exploration.
• Combos. As far as I can tell, the reward for performing a 4-strike combo was that the last strike did 50% more damage. That comes to 1+1+1+1.5/4 = 1.125. A 12.5% advantage. This is supposed to be a core feature of combat and it barely gives a double digit increase.
• Items that boost skills for 8%. An entire accessory slot dedicated to a skill I get to use once a minute, and they have the gall to give it a bonus below double digit.
• Limit breaks, LIMIT BREAKS, give a damage bonus of 10%.
• A new weapon is always 5 points better than the last one, always with equal stagger and attack. Only Ragnarok and Gotterdammerung were meaningful bumps.
• Every weapon has equal stagger and attack values. Why even have separate values, if you aren’t going to give the player a choice on which to prioritize.
• Top-tier armor giving 50 extra hp when the current total is over 2000.
• Even staggering, arguably the most central mechanism, gives a maximum of 50% advantage. 50% for 10 seconds once every minute. Bleh.

I can only presume that they did this to balance the action combat. Slower paced combat is about making interesting decisions before and during the combat, action combat is just about being good at pressing buttons at the right times. People who enjoy action combat seem to feel very positively about it in this game so they apparently succeeded. I just wish they didn’t do it at the cost of removing every single mechanically interesting decision in the whole game.

Summary

In the end I just switched to Story Focused and breezed through. It was an enjoyable enough experience, but left me dissatisfied. I’m glad the action people are happy, but I need to go and play some game with actual decisions for a change.

PS. Yes, choosing your skill layout is the one mechanically meaningful decision you can make, and is fine. The skills are, a bit too well-balanced relative to each other to make this more than a stylistic choice. The only thing that really matters in combat is dodging and parrying, which are admittedly satisfying.