Why DID I Like FF16?
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I didn’t expect to be thinking about Final Fantasy XVI in the current year of 2025. I found it entertaining to play, but pushed it aside once I completed the story. I didn’t pay any attention to the DLC.
At one point, I reflected on my review and decided that my “Two Thumbs Up” rating was a bit high. I bumped it down a tier, reworded some text in hopes that I wouldn’t oversell the game, and figured that’d be the end of it.
Somehow, FF16 kept cropping up in casual discussions. The more I thought about it, the more its flaws stood out. I found myself asking, “Hey, did I actually enjoy this game?”
And now I’m here (mostly to try and break my writer’s block).
But first, I want to quickly mention the opinions that have remained the same.
I still think that FF16 is fun even if flawed. Its combat mechanics are arguably shallow, but I didn't outright hate them. I won't deny that I enjoyed following the main story. The maps being slightly larger than hallways didn't bother me, but that's because I have less patience with arbitrarily large open worlds.
FF16 isn't a game worth paying its full price tag, but I didn't regret my purchase.
So, what changed?
Ironically, my opinions of combat. Something that my review skimmed over was the “dead zones” with special moves. Since FF16 lacks mana bars, most attacks instead have cooldowns. If none of them are ready, Clive is limited to basic Eikonic Feats (e.g. dash with Phoenix, block with Titan) and pitiful basic sword combos. This kneecaps the flow of battle, which is a terrible idea for a game that gestures towards Devil May Cry.
I reckon that my build for Clive partially mitigated this annoyance. I constantly weaved around enemies with a 1-minute rotation of combos. While the result was flashy, the reality was an underwhelming DPS output and excessively long fights… on Normal difficulty. You can see this in my “Favorite Build” video (below). All I discovered was a way to keep my hands busy.
Based on my limited exposure to ARPGs, I found the stupid simple answer while playing Ys 8. In it, the party's special moves pull from a shared mana bar, which is quickly replenished with a few melee attacks. The system exists to discourage spamming while also minimizing the time spent in dead zones. The flow of combat is smoother this way.
I'm sure this is a no-brainer discovery, but I don't want to postulate about games I haven't played (at least in this article).
A huge source of my existential crisis originates from a fantastic video by Ember's Arcade. A talking point that I hadn't considered was what he calls “fear of failure”.
The phrase applies to both Creative Studio III as well as the player's experience with FF16 (and FF14 by extension). The restricted maps, simplistic combat, higher difficulty options locked behind the easier campaign, it's all in service of making the game feel easy to approach. The player can't be pushed too hard, or else they’d lose interest in watching multiple feature-length movies. The challenge is technically there, but the default experience is the one that avoids the risk of failure.
This philosophy bleeds into FF16's RPG mechanics, which I forgot to mention in my review because they're effectively absent. Clive's swords and clothes exist to make a number go up. There's no real need to weigh and balance stat distributions, type matchups, or secondary effects. Most accessories give a small boost to either one specific attack or stat. It’s a non-committal implementation of the genre's tropes, as if the game is scared of overwhelming the player.
My final major opinion shift comes from the story. Originally, I brought up small talk and how I didn't mind it during sidequests. That was probably because I was in the middle of Heavensward.
While I was trying to catch up in FF14, I found Heavensward's story to be as amazing as the fandom hyped about. I shelved base Realm Reborn twice due to boring text-heavy monologues, but in its expansion, there were more hits than misses. I was invested in characters describing every nuance behind their motivations and traumas.
Unfortunately, the luster of “small talk” didn't last forever. By the time I completed FF16, I was in the middle of Stormblood's main story. I no longer saw the charm in characters having long discussions; it was just yapping.
And as cool as Shadowbringers was, I was on the verge of throwing my controller after the third time characters yapped instead of letting the game roll credits. I was finally burnt out with the formula.
Honestly, I miss having that simple joy in listening to all those monologues. Moving forward, my tolerance will be limited. FF16 gets to be a rare exception, because it was simply in the right place at the right time.
