Gungan Final Fantasy XVI Review

The most braindead Final Fantasy in the series. This is not an RPG. It is a straight action fighter. If you like the PS2 era GoW or DmC with some open world elements thrown in? This is probably your game. The side quests are few and consist of basically nothing but fetch quests, or a hunting board with buff targets to kill. None are interesting or challenging, but some are necessary for QoL upgrades. The itemization may as well not exist. You will get gear upgrades at specific points in the story. Weapon increases the 2 weapon stats, armor increases the 2 armor stats. There is literally nothing to think about here. Exploring for hidden items in the world is not rewarding at all. Random sparkles on the ground give pitiful amounts of gil or some crafting items, neither of which you will ever be short of. Chests mostly give larger amounts of crafting items, or once in a blue moon an item that is already a downgrade. Combat itself is actually crisp and responsive. That's about the best thing you can say about it. You are given a selection of abilities to use, but can only ever use 6 at a time. However, there's no reason to ever switch from your preferred selections because nothing requires you to (i.e. fire enemies still take full fire damage). Enemies are also annoying damage sponges. Weak enemies usually come in packs but take unnecessarily long to kill and you will probably take zero damage in the process. Tough enemies require you to break their stun bar and unload on them, repeat until dead. This is exactly the same process for every tough enemy you will encounter. Limit break is just a basic boring berserk mode you toggle on an off when the bars fill that makes you attack faster and fire more magic. The Eikon fights are even less challenging and more braindead than regular combat somehow. You have far fewer abilities to use. They just jack up the spectacle and quick time event frequency to 11. The protagonist is not memorable. A couple of the side characters are decent. Nothing at all compared to the casts of 6-10, though. The story is very generic slavery and crystals bad, with competing kingdoms fighting over influence. There will probably be many times during your playthrough where you will just get bored of it and have to push yourself to keep going. A serviceable game overall, but not worthy of the FF name.