This isn’t a review. If it was a review, I’d be talking at least some about the things I enjoyed in this game (good music, nice graphics, a solid trio of core characters, expansive and well-presented lore) – but right now I just feel like complaining. It’s easier to be funny when I’m being negative, anyway. I played through the majority of FFXVI with a friend at my side, which greatly helped to take the edge off things; if you want to try it out, I’d recommend you do the same.  

Accepting the Truth

Final Fantasy XVI peaks during a relatively early boss fight, wherein the player is encouraged to “Click L3+R3 to Accept the Truth.”  This unlocks the ability to turn into a flaming, badass version of protagonist Clive, who will henceforth be referred to as “Liquid Clive.” After this, our enjoyment followed a similar trajectory to Lynyrd Skynyrd’s last flight: precipitous, in a bad way.

Magic Wolves, Love Interests, and other NPCs

Clive has a pet wolf named Torgal (yes, he gets the ability to turn into a magical version of himself that I call “Liquid Torgal”) and a friend/love interest named Jill that accompany him for much of the game. They’re likeable characters with cool visual designs. The problem is that the player’s interactions them – outside of cutscenes – are limited to telling Torgal to bite someone’s ankles or heal approximately .05% of Clive’s health. He’s a good boy, but not a very useful one. You can’t control Jill’s actions at all – which streamlines combat, sure, but do you think I come to Final Fantasy for streamlined mechanics? Fuck, no! I want to go through at least four menus before my character even thinks about drawing their ludicrously-shaped sword.

Other characters are hits and misses in equal amounts: the dashing rogue Cid and the kind-of-villainous Benedikta are fun, but (spoiler alert) they both die relatively early in the tale. The other villains are varying levels of forgettable (apart from Clive’s delightfully shitty mom) and the support characters (other than the aforementioned dog and girlfriend) are either annoying or bland. Some interesting stuff pops up in the side quests, which is nice, but it sure as hell doesn’t pop up in all of them.

Tactile Gameplay

You really feel like a doofus when you’re getting your ass kicked by a giant turtle. Even when you beat the turtle, you feel like an asshole, because turtles are endangered. (Fuckin’ makes sense, with the things breathing ice blasts at passersby all the time. A guy’s gotta defend himself.)

This game really feels like Devil May Cry 5’s nerdy younger brother. It’s got some of the combos, but none of the exaggerated swagger of a bl- I’ll stop.[1] Sure, you can swap out multiple sets of heavy/light attacks for Clive to use, but every combat ends up settling into a rhythm of “whale on the enemy, fill up their stagger meter, use every special attack I have, wait for the cooldowns to end and repeat.” Just to put it in perspective, I worried less about the elemental magic I was using than I might in a basic Pokémon battle. And I’m talking, like, ‘90s GameBoy shit. Early battles. Ash Ketchum barely dipping his toes in the game.

…holy shit, did you guys know “Ketchum” sounds like “Catch’em?” I wonder what his name is in Japan. Probably [EDITED FOR CULTURAL SENSITIVITY].

The Kojima Problem

 You know exactly what I’m fucking talking about. The issue with FFXVI is that it doesn’t have the absolute stones that Mr. Kojima’s stories do: you won’t see a single person who can control bees or read your memory card, just a series of gruff assholes who chew up a Godfather’s worth of screen time before you fight them…a process which often entails an irritating trudge through setpieces dominated by pseudo-gameplay that tend to last longer than a reluctant shit.

The player spends a truly inordinate amount of time mashing triangle to shoot piddly-ass fireballs out of a phoenix’s beak. I’d rather climb up a ladder for five minutes while listening to some lady wail about eating reptiles.[2]

Caulk & Bawl

My friend and I spent about 65% the game with a large blob of text reading “Caulk and Bawl” seemingly permanently engraved on the side of the screen. This delightful penile pun is the title of a side quest, the details of which I don’t care to remember. “Caulk and Bawl” persisted through betrayals, battles, romances, and obvious plot twists. Our only reprieve was during cutscenes; ultimately, even this felt hollow, as we knew that we (and Clive) would soon be returned to a Caulk & Bawl-themed purgatory.

Don’t get me wrong, we knocked out more than a few side quests during our playthrough. (The way the game indicated which quests would reward us with permanent upgrades was quite appreciated, to be fair.) The only one of these that I remember is one that involved several peasants, and then a small child, being eaten by monsters. Don’t worry, the kid deserved it. Otherwise? This shit was a snoozefest. The beast hunts were, for the most part, fine, but they perfectly exemplified the game’s limited combat mechanics and tended to be a pain in the gooch to travel to. It followed a classic loop: open world map, travel to city that’s far the fuck off, go to actual location of monster, fight…and that’s it. The only variation came from having to wander around the general area indicated by the hunt board to get the encounter to trigger.

That said, we got to ride around on a chocobo wearing an eyepatch (the bird, not Liquid Clive), and that was cool.

So it’s Jon Snow, but…

The story has less balls. Fewer? Fewer balls. Except when it comes to making the main character’s mom a gigantic bitch. Good lord, could I not wait for that woman to go the way of the dodo.

Overall, the story is both incredibly complex and quite simple. In terms of character arcs, it’s pretty basic. When it comes to the setting, things spiral out, perhaps a bit too much. While I appreciate the game’s willingness to educate the player about the setting and recent plot events, I found it all to be a bit much for what the plot ended up actually being. The multiple warring nations ended up intersecting less than I’d like, with their leaders fought one-at-a-time in predictable order. At least the dog lives.

Clive Bested

I shit you not, the game put me into an unwinnable boss fight 85¾ of the way through the story and then it had the fucking gall to hit me with an XP screen reading “Clive Bested.” I don’t know whether to be enraged or impressed. My co-player engaged another boss for a solid 12-15 minutes and managed to knock off…5% of the motherfucker’s health bar. He killed the guy slower than an intermittent smoking habit.

At this point, I’m pretty much out of stuff to complain about, so I’ll stop there. Like I said before, there are good things about this game, and I don’t blame you in the slightest if you enjoyed it, but I had more fun writing that one Lynyrd Skynyrd joke earlier than I did in my entire playthrough (apart from the Liquid Clive thing).

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[1] Shoutout to that classic IGN Miles Morales review – I couldn’t find the original, but here’s a clip if you need to refresh your memory:

[2] I can hear it now: What a thrill…