I cannot reconcile the game I played with the fact that there's so much FFXIV creative DNA on the development team. What on earth went wrong? If I didn't know any better, I'd have bet my shirt that this either began life as Unrelated Grimdark Fantasy Game and got rebranded to FFXVI at the eleventh hour, or else was the work of an outside team who weren't really that familiar with FF but definitely wanted to get some of that Game of Thrones money, seven or eight years too late. There's very little of the wonder, warmth and whimsy (the three W's) that one typically associates with the Final Fantasy brand here, and in fact the game seems somewhat embarrassed at times to be a part of the series. For example, mounting a chocobo gives you a two-second sting of their theme but then it's back to business as usual. The climax of the prologue section is a harrowing, viscerally upsetting scene where Ifrit tears Phoenix apart while Clive cries and screams I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU. I get that it's meant to be unpleasant to watch, but it reaches a level of adolescent, faux-mature edgelordiness that I don't really want in my Final Fantasy, and I honestly considered turning the game off there and then.
Valisthea is a grimy, grey world populated by miserable people who are sick of living there. Why should I want to save any of it? At no point is there any incentive to explore off of the critical path, because there's nothing interesting to see or find. Contrast FF7 Rebirth, which boasts a vibrant, expansive land stuffed with secrets and things to do, and charming, memorable characters to meet.
In lieu of interesting art direction we are given Spectacle in the form of the Eikon battles, which start with you turning into Godzilla and only ramp up from there until you're Shadow-of-the-Colossusing your way up the body of a screaming rock golem the size of a continent. During that sequence in particular I could practically feel the developers looking back at me every few seconds, going "isn't this the most fucking epic thing you've ever seen?!" when the scale and tryhard excess of it was so absurd that it actually became kind of boring. It's like the endless Obi-Wan vs. Anakin lightsaber fight in Revenge of the Sith, where it's so overblown and overdesigned that it just ends up feeling mind-numbing and artificial. I'm sure each such battle took thousands of man-hours to put together but I wish they hadn't bothered.
The characters don't fare much better. Clive's alright, I guess; he initially presents as Grizzled Hero Man #68721 but gradually reveals himself to be kind of an endearing dumbass.
Barnabas: My master awaits you in the capital... But I cannot allow you to attend him in your current state.
Clive, who's gotten his ass kicked to within an inch of his life by this exact guy twice now: And how are you going to stop us?!
You tell him, Clive.
Jill is almost completely flat and exists only to either agree with Clive or be put into peril, and might as well not be a Dominant at all given how underpowered Shiva seems compared to the rest of the pantheon. (There's not even a discussion of her accompanying the Menfolk into the final battle.) Benedikta probably should have been the Dominant of Ice instead, considering how quickly she gets fridged. She goes mad because Clive beats her and steals her power, is then accosted by a gang of men who clearly intend to rape her, and is last seen as a head in a box. Great stuff. Cid coasts quite a ways into my good graces on Ralph Ineson's gravelly deadpan performance alone, but he also only exists to dream so hilariously small as to make Clive appear visionary by comparison:
Cid: My dream is to build a place where people can die on their own terms.
Clive: What about a place where people can LIVE on their own terms?
Cid: ...My God. You're brilliant.
Mid, Byron and Gav are all pretty likeable but aren't going to be topping any "Best Final Fantasy Characters of All Time" lists. I quickly learned to hate Vivian, the geopolitical scholar who unveils an unskippable Powerpoint presentation dripping with overblown gravitas whenever someone asks her what time it is.
Clive: I need to know the current situation in Waloed.
Vivian: In order to understand that, you first must know the history of the region!
Clive: What? No. Just tell me what's going--
Vivian: IT ALL BEGAN SIX THOUSAND YEARS AGO, AMIDST FIRE AND TURMOIL MOST FOUL
Clive: No. No!!!!!!
Torgal is a good boy and you can pet him whenever you want. 10/10, no notes. Later he suddenly morphs into a glowing blue wolf deity and everybody's like "Huh! Anyway,"
Ultima's calm, cold detachment from everything is kind of an interesting note for a villain. He seems genuinely puzzled as to why humans wouldn't all just agree to be turned into LCL or whatever is supposed to happen when his plan reaches fruition. I'm not sure I understand the timeline as he explains it, though. He first gave the world magic as a gift, which then caused the Blight, so he created mankind in order to eventually produce Mythos. So... who was using the magic before that? The chocobos, I guess.
I don't really have anything to say about the rest of the cast.
The game got one (1) good laugh out of me, when Barnabas/Odin stomps Clive for the second time: the victory fanfare plays and up pops the message CLIVE BESTED. Finally, a sign of life, some 35 hours in. Unfortunately it turned out to be an isolated incident.