Final Fantasy XVI review

Please bring back the Final Fantasies of yore

*Image taken from the Steam website. No copyright infringement intended.

April 5, 2025

Categorization: Fantasy

Where played: PS5

Non-spoiler review.

I was beyond excited to play FFXVI. I have been a HUGE fan of the Final Fantasy games all my life. Some of the most seminal moments of gameplay in my childhood involved playing FF VII, VIII, IX, and X with my brother. As children we would normally fight (as I suppose all children do) to the death over our shared video game equipment. I remember this one horrific moment when I was eight maybe and he was seven and we shared a Gameboy Color, and I came home from school one day to discover that he had deleted my 15-hour saved game of Pokemon Blue… I thought we would be estranged for life.

So amidst all this conflict, one bright spot in my memory of when we were kids is when we played FFIX together in our little PlayStation 1, as a team, helping each other solve the puzzles and taking turns at the controller (remember the random battle system? Those could get tiring!), while sharing that wonderful adventure. I still remember one of the last puzzles involving statues in the castle of the final boss that we stayed up all night (until 10:30 PM) trying to solve, until mom forced us to go to bed. She swore the next day that she could hear us talking to each other in our sleep, still trying to solve the puzzle. Which we did the next day! I remember fondly our eight and nine-year old glee and sense of triumph. Those early, all-absorbing Final Fantasy games had such an incredible sense of wonder and joy that they created lifelong gamers and lovers of Fantasy out of these two kids.

And this (unfortunately) is the standard to which I hold all Final Fantasy games after FFVII, VIII, IX, and X. I thought Final Fantasy VII Remake, only four or five years past, came very very close, and so it was with bated breath and these high expectations that I plugged in Final Fantasy XVI.

I finished it in hard mode and I have only one question.

Why exactly did Square Enix make this game?

Certainly, it was not to create any sort of Fantasy that anyone would want to be in (see my post here on reflections on the Fantasy genre). I will repeat, the core of Fantasy is to create a world that people want to BE in. And believe you me, I did not, at any point in the game, want to be in the world of FFXVI. It was like playing all the depressing parts of Game of Thrones (the books, not the show, which I only watched a few episodes of). It was set in a similar time period (knights, swords, castles, feudal villages), it had some kind of zombies, it had reluctant deposed royalty, and war, disease, and death, and gruesome but also sexualized characters. I guess that would have been sort of fine if it had some kind of interesting story or more to the world than just death, disease, and violence, but no.

The world's scenery was equally depressing and boring to explore – grey villages, ruins, stormy clouds, boring forests hiding the same type of resources and bad guys… I persisted with it with a vague sense of loyalty to the franchise and with a feeling of, surely the good part is coming soon, but no. FFXVI was depressing at the beginning and continued to be depressing and vaguely boring and predictable until the end.

This game cemented my belief that a making a big world does not necessarily equate to making an open world. FFXVI had a big world, but exploration yielded no rewards or surprises, so one had very little incentive to explore it.

OK, some parts were pretty cool, I guess, like the animations of the Phoenix and the GFs really (Ifrit, Shiva, the usual suspects) were like, obvious PS5 showcase animations, and I was really impressed with one particular cutscene where you take over the GF completely ( I cannot remember, probably the Ifrit-character) and thought to myself, I can see the future of gaming. But, alas, I am not one of those tech bros who can or will dwell for long on the specs of some animations. I barely know what a pixel is. As a comparative scholar of Fantasy as a genre, for me, it will always come down to the story, the lore, and the world-building. And like I said, I have already read Game of Thrones.

And just when I was already mad at this depressing world and forcing myself to finish it in the name of scholarship, they hit you with an ambiguous ending. I HATE THAT!!!! Very few stories are good enough to carry off a goddamn ambiguous ending, AND THIS WAS NOT ONE OF THEM. It just made me feel even MORE like I wasted my time.

Aside from that, the game was too easy, which again makes me wonder whom this game is for. It is not for fans of Final Fantasy, that’s for sure, because AGAIN, the old Final Fantasy games were joyous adventures, not some muck around of the North after Ned Stark was killed. It’s not for normal gamers, as the combat is too simple, repetitive, and easy – at times I felt like I was just playing an interactive movie.

It only occurs to me now… is it for, dare I say, CASUAL gamers? But as far as I know of the breed, casual gamers prefer happy and relaxing games (Animal Crossing?). I don’t think casual gamers will have the stamina or enough curiosity to power through this long-ass grey game.

It is sad when other games can do Final Fantasy better than the creators of Final Fantasy (Nino Kuni, Dragon Quest X, even that old game Dark Cloud II).

As I ruminate glumly on the future of the Final Fantasy series, which after so many years has only this sad, derivative IP to show for it, I think I will just hope that Square Enix will remake some of their best work, that is, Final Fantasy VIII, IX, X, Age of the Zodiac (I can’t remember what number that is anymore), and Kingdom Hearts. I think so many people would be delighted with these remakes (despite Final Fantasy Rebirth, which I abandoned), and perhaps, in the process of re-making, Square Enix will rediscover how it managed to make great Fantasy all those years ago in the first place.