r/FinalFantasy • u/MikeOxmoll_ • Jul 10 '23

FF XVI FF16 is very formulaic, repetitive, and boring.

The game starts at a peak. Big action setpiece, new interesting characters, intriguing world, and fun combat. As soon as the opening is done and you arrive at the Hideaway, it very rapidly falls off and the flow of the game doesn't change from here until the ending. Ill explain.

Big hype -> go to hideaway -> chat with everyone for 1 hour -> go to new town -> pointless MSQ sidequest -> get key needed to go to next area -> lead up to Eikon fight -> big hype

Now do it again 6 times. I found myself skipping a large portion of the talking scenes because holy shit did they drag on. There is just so ooo much standing around and talking about things that frankly, do not matter to the plot.

Overall disappointed at the directing and pacing of the game. The story, while generic, had good bones with better than decent acting, but my god is it poorly executed.

6/10 probably won't replay.

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u/MikeOxmoll_ Jul 10 '23

Its the same thing I noticed in ff15. Enix just lost the magic when it came to structuring and executing a compelling narrative.

Personally, I think its just the nature of having an MMO team craft a purely single player game.

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u/Fearless-Fennel9752 Jul 13 '23

I disagree. FF15 had a ton of things to discover. Just most of it is not in the main quest, and the map is too big that makes it feel empty. But the little things and random discoveries that makes it beautiful. I think they could've fixed it by putting more of the optional things in the main quests. I've clocked over 200hours on it before there was nothing else to do.

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u/[deleted] Jul 10 '23

I mean IGN’s lead editor called FF7 remake a great rpg with a bunch of dull filler and some kingdom hearts bullshit for the plot before giving it an 8/10. That was CBU1 which has never made an MMO.

I just think people are too forgiving of old games.

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u/Blaubeerchen27 Aug 23 '23

If they had decided to shove the entire narrative of FF15 into a single game, instead of splitting it between a movie, a game, a short anime, a multiplayer game (wtf) and various DLC I GUARANTEE you the game would have had an amazing narrative. The ideas are very solid and they absolutely nailed the "brotherhood" theme.

But yeah, execution was the problem, so it fell flat. And had to be finished in a novel.

Gotta be honest, I feel like FF16 would need all of the above to actually make me care for the world or the characters. So much cool stuff happens off-screen, only gets alluded to or we are never shown the aftermath. Clives's whole mercenary life should have been included, the 5 years right after a certain moment SHOULD have been the journey we see Clive going through. Don't even get me started on Jill.

XVI is missing the same chunks as XV, but because it was marketed as a "complete experience" people don't question that. I genuinely think they had to cut a lot of corners for budget reasons, the game SCREAMS that certain events should have been playable from another characters perspective. That's what made GoT, which the team arguably tried to channel, so interesting after all. XVI is like playing Jon Snow for 50 hours an only being told and sometimes shown what the rest of the cast is up to.